This icy, subtle production presents Margaret Atwood’s terrifying vision with a clear-sighted, almost detached precision. Poul Ruders’s score gets under your skin, amping up the tension as events come to a head, while the heart-breaking performances relentlessly deal the emotional blows. Opera as commentary, catharsis and conscience: brilliantly done. * ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ the opera,…
Category: 20th century
Ice flows: Penguin Cafe, Barbican, London
Penguin Cafe’s recent performance at London’s Barbican Centre is likely to go down, in my own personal annals, as one of my favourite concerts of all time. It still feels like hyperbole to type that: it was only a few weeks ago. But how can I explain? – that wave of euphoria that carries you…
Fashioning Masculinities at the Victoria and Albert Museum
With its latest exhibition Fashioning Masculinities, the Victoria and Albert Museum traces the paths of masculinity through clothes, objects, film, and painting, from the 16th century to the present. I admit to having been a little sceptical about the enterprise, fearing that it would be too much of a challenge to cover such a broad topic over…
Continental lift: Rebeca Omordia, ‘African Pianism’; the African Concert Series
This marvellous disc contains multitudes. The variety of sounds and styles packed into its generous 77 minutes showcases not only the infinite intrigue of a music too little-heard until now, but the lightly-worn virtuosity of Omordia herself. (Important note: for the facts/background underpinning this post, I’m indebted to Robert Matthew-Walker’s invaluable booklet notes which, in…
A Moving New Production of Cunning Little Vixen at ENO
Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen is a perplexing but masterful opera, full of darkness, yearning and joy. On the surface it is a fantastical story, that of a Vixen who is captured by a Forester and who escapes, after causing a minor Orwellian revolution amongst the hens. She falls for a Fox, and my apologies for the spoiler,…
Material worlds: ‘Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life’ at the Hepworth, Wakefield
As you can see from the first image below, this marvellous exhibition is about to close at the Hepworth. However, it rapidly gains new life as a touring show: first to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art from 9 April to 22 October 2022, then to Tate St Ives from 26 November 2022 to…
Opalescence – Piano and chamber music by Ruth Gipps
Sonata for cello and piano, op. 63 (1978) – world premiere recording The Fairy Shoemaker (1929) – world premiere recording Theme and Variations, op. 57a (1965) The Ox and the Ass Introduction and Carol, op. 71 (1988) Opalescence, op. 72 (1989) Scherzo and Adagio for Unaccompanied Cello, OP. 68 (1987) – world premiere recording Sonata…
The dark ascending: Dead Space Chamber Music, ‘The Black Hours’
This is music at once vivid, immediate – and at the same time, otherworldly, almost surreal. In its heady combination of genres, approaches and sounds, the album feels both timeless and original. In the best sense, it’s a sonic trap, daring you to identify familiar elements and motifs, only to snatch them away and re-purpose…
With ‘Heritage’ Violinist Rudin Uncovers Denisov
Fedor Rudin’s album Heritage celebrates Russian repertoire and more specifically the music of composer Edison Denisov (1929-1996). Denisov is associated with modernist music in Soviet Russia of the 1960s. With mentors like Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich and Debussy an early inspiration, I was keen to hear how these musical influences panned out. Rudin’s decision to premiere…
Life Between Islands Lights up Tate Britain
Life Between Islands at Tate Britain is a large show, so give yourself time to peruse the wealth of Caribbean-British art from the 1950s to the present. The exhibition opens with the old guard artists, who came to settle in Britain between the late 1940s and 1970s. Aubrey Williams’s expressionist art grabbed my attention in the first…
ARTMUSELONDON 