This brilliant suite of songs practises its own apparent witchcraft, seducing you more or less straightaway with its beauty – which doesn’t fade after repeated listens. But as the debut album from Anakronos grows more familiar, it reveals and revels in layer after layer of sinister chills and thought-provoking arrangements and effects. Anakronos are a…
Author: ArtMuseLondon
ArtMuseLondon is a site for reviews of art exhibitions and music in London, and general cultural musings, written by people with a keen interest and an honest, accessible approach.
The Velvet Underground & Nico: The Ultimate Statement of Popular Art?
Guest post by Doug Thomas I recently re-immersed myself in the works of The Velvet Underground — especially The Velvet Underground & Nico (TVU&N) — and self-flagellated myself for not having written anything about it before. The album, released in 1967, is The Ultimate Statement of Popular Art, and an incredibly accurate portrait of the…
Sound travels: Xuefei Yang, Melbourne Guitar Festival
Xuefei Yang had prepared a globe-trotting programme that had the happy effect of demonstrating her breathtaking versatility across so many styles
Mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge and Irish composer Sir Hamilton Harty
Sir Hamilton Harty, composer of many songs of the Edwardian era, has the sort of name you would associate with the character from a Woodhouse novel. He was however a serious musician of Irish extraction from County Down. In 1901 he left Dublin, where he was church organist, and headed to London. Though virtually unknown…
Camerata Tchaikovsky’s ‘Russian Colours’ sheds new light on Alexander Glazunov
London-based string orchestra, Camerata Tchaikovsky, releases its second recording, Russian Colours on Orchid Classics on June 19th 2020. The heavyweights of the Russian romantic canon are all there on this album: Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Borodin, Arensky, and the lesser known, and the under-appreciated, Alexander Glazunov. Taught by Rimsky Korsakov at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, Glazunov was…
Virtual reality
I think experience has now told us – if we needed convincing – that these communal events are worth having. Not because they’re a substitute for live events, but because they ‘top us up’ culturally and emotionally, while reminding us to never lose sight of the irreplaceable power of the real thing.
Celebration of Dutch master Nicolaes Maes at the National Gallery
I admit I hadn’t heard of Nicholaes Maes, reportedly Rembrandt’s favourite pupil, so I was very keen to discover his work at the National Gallery at the beginning of March 2020, just before lockdown. The mid-seventeenth century must have been an exciting time for the young Maes, who left his home town of…
Titian: Love, Desire, Death extended at the National Gallery
When COVID-19 forced the doors of the National Gallery to shut on 18 March 2020, it meant that the long planned, eagerly anticipated, once in a lifetime exhibition Titian: Love, Desire, Death also had to close after being open for just three days. Universally acclaimed Titian: Love, Desire, Death brings together the artist’s epic series…
My favourite things: the museum gift shop
I was often denied a visit to the museum giftshop as a child. Hence, now I’m a fully-fledged grown up, I have a rather over-enthusiastic fondness for such places, something which my friend and co-founder of ArtMuseLondon, Nick, finds rather amusing. I’m not sure why my parents steered me away from the giftshop at the…
Culture in a time of coronavirus
2020 got off to a flying start, culture-wise, with the Royal Academy’s remarkable Picasso on Paper exhibition, and our quartet of reviewers were eagerly looking forward to a busy year of exhibitions, concerts and opera. On one trip to London, I managed to fit in not one but three exhibitions in a single day –…
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