Journalist, photographer and social commentator.
Sir Simon Rattle is the London Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director Designate after Valery Gergiev last autumn took his leave of London’s oldest symphony orchestra. I can’t pass a fair judgement on the Russian’s performance, as I was not based in […]
Sir Simon Rattle will this weekend ( 9-10 January 2016) lead the London Symphony Orchestra in a semi-staged performance of Debussy’s only opera Pelléas et Mélisande at the Barbican in London. This is yet another collaborative effort between Rattle and the […]
Sir Simon Rattle has had a second go at recording Sibelius’s symphony cycle. His first attempt in the 1980s with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) resulted in some very decent recordings that have stood the test of time. […]
Recently the Berlin Philharmonic with Sir Simon Rattle at the helm released the complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies. The general level of playing is very high, as you would expect from one of the best orchestras in the world with […]
She has been dead for nearly forty years but there is no stopping her. The last book she wrote was her autobiography which came out posthumously in 1977. As far as I know there are no unpublished gems hiding in […]
MC gangs, a tentative teenage gay love story, a professional sharpshooter, an undercover infiltrator for a secretive police unit, a female detective, a criminal boss with international ties, his young daughter, a pedophile and a host of other more ’ordinary’ […]
BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, Friday 28 August 2015 prom 57 I have no idea “how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall” , but at the Chamber Orchestra of Europe’s recent BBC Proms concert (no.57) the hall was […]
Michael Beutler has landed his site-specific, massive installation called Moby Dick in the historic hall of the former train station Hamburger Bahnhof. This is by far Berlin’s coolest art museum that undeservedly doesn’t pull in the hipster crowds that other […]
The 104th edition of the Bayreuth Festival has just kicked off with Christian Thielemann conducting Tristan und Isolde. Thielemann was recently appointed as the very first music director of the Bayreuther Festspiele. The opening night saw the usual procession of German celebrities, high nobility […]
ROBERTO DEVEREUX by GAETANO DONIZETTI Libretto: Salvatore Cammarano Bayerische Staatsoper, seen at the Nationaltheater in Munich, 15th of July 2015 Age is no hindrance, when you are singing. Placido Domingo is 74 years old and has during the last decade […]
ARABELLA by R. Strauss/H. von Hofmannsthal Seen at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich 14/07/2015 I have been racking my brain for a couple of days now, but I am pretty sure it is called an ‘archaic smile’. Anja Harteros’s lips […]
SAMSON ET DALILA by CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS Seen at Grange Park Opera June 24, 2015 The story, taken from the Book of Judges, about a classic haircut is well-known. We are all familiar with that sinking feeling and loss of potency […]