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…
Category: review
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…
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 –…
Soprano Romaniw Celebrates Slavic Repertoire with ‘Arion’
Natalya Romaniw’s star has been shining bright on the operatic stage for the past five years as her creamy soprano voice continues to draw an ever increasing legion of fans. A Daily Telegraph critic suggested in February this year that Romaniw was the next Netrebko of her generation. At Opera Holland Park last season,…
“32 Masterpieces” – Jonathan Biss | Beethoven the Complete Piano Sonatas
For American pianist Jonathan Biss, Beethoven has been a near-constant companion for almost his entire life. He has been playing and writing about the 32 Piano Sonatas and has spent nearly ten years recording Beethoven’s sonatas. Now he is performing all the sonatas over a nine-month period, with concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall and in…
A kind of blue: Léon Spilliaert at the RA
Last year the disquieting images of Felix Vallotton filled the Sackler Gallderies of the Royal Academy of Arts (read ArtMuseLondon’s review here). This spring, another little-known artist, Belgian Léon Spilliaert is represented, in this the first major exhibition of his work in the UK. Like Vallotton world, Spilliaert’s is unsettling, but for different reasons. Plagued…
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