Music Reviews
Preview: Leonidas Kavakos, Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Published: 21 May 2007
OAE/Rattle/Isserlis, Barbican, London
Published: 21 May 2007
As the movement for historically informed performance edged closer to the 19th century, I can recall many a sceptic laughing at the prospect of composers like Dvorak on period instruments. Who's laughing now? It's only when you hear - as we did in this exhilarating concert from Simon Rattle and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment - the transformation in character, balance, and timbre that occurs when you return Dvorak's music to an orchestra approximate to that of his day that you begin to realise how much it has been misrepresented by the bigger-is-better culture of the last 100 years. Our perceptions are reprogrammed by the experience.
The Great Escape, Corn Exchange/Zap/The Gloucester/Brighton Pier. Brighton
Published: 21 May 2007
Europe's answer to the SXSW festival in Texas was established a year ago as a platform for export-ready international artists to showcase their music.
Jazz: Roberto Fonseca,St George's, Bristol
Published: 20 May 2007
Pelléas et Mélisande, Royal Opera House London
Ruth Palmer/Alexei Grynyuk, Wigmore Hall,London
Published: 20 May 2007
First Night: Great Escape, Festival, Brighton
Published: 18 May 2007
Lucia Di Lammermoor, Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Published: 18 May 2007
Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is a vehicle for great singers. But you can get away with less if you let the score ring brightly, and refrain from over-producing. This was what happened in Glasgow in John Doyle's new production for Scottish Opera.
Interpol, KoKo, London
Published: 18 May 2007
Interpol sold out their London show yet again, this time in just 10 minutes. Their cult status is such that a large group of obsessed fans scramble to the foot of the stage after the gig, trying to get hold of the band's plectrums, set lists, and whatever else the roadies are throwing their way.
BBC SO/Gardner/Connolly Barbican London
Published: 17 May 2007
It's a brave young composer who agrees to share a programme with Walton's First Symphony - particularly when his own piece happens to be called Symphony. Julian Anderson completed it in 2003 while composer in association to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its form, though cunningly sub-divided to behave like a kind of desiccated symphony, is freer, more impressionistic, and even more dance-like than that.
The Kissaway Trail, Barfly, London
Published: 17 May 2007
We need uplifting music in these dark times and The Kissaway Trail are here to provide it. The Danish five-piece from Odense have made the debut album of the year so far and wormed their way into the psyche of BBC 6 Music listeners and indie connoisseurs. As the front four sing the album opener "Forever Turned Out to be Too Long" in unison like The Polyphonic Spree without the unnecessary manpower, I'm sold. The ebullient "La La Song", complete with exhortations to "run away, today, let's rock them in LA" confirms my first impression. They seem to have taken the Flaming Lips' updated psychedelia template and injected the energy of Arcade Fire into it. Sure, these are easy reference points but, if mentioning them helps attract new fans to this wonderful band, I have no qualms about doing so.
OMD, Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow
Published: 17 May 2007
"Are you warmed up yet?" asked OMD front man Andy McCluskey at one point during this long-awaited comeback show. "It's not all about culture and politics, you can enjoy yourselves." There's the dichotomy of OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) right there. While their early days relied heavily on edgy prototype electro, their latter period was a somewhat corny free-for-all of unashamed pop fluff.
Mika, Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Published: 16 May 2007
Mika's story is the sort that prodigies often look back on. His early life was a series of dislocations (his family fled war-torn Eighties Beirut, his dad was a Gulf War hostage), and his schoolboy alienation was so extreme that he temporarily lost the power to read, write or speak. Convinced that songwriting would be his salvation at the age of nine, and a Royal Opera House vocal veteran at 11, Mika's dreams came true at 23 with the massive hit "Grace Kelly".
LSO / Gergiev, Barbican, London
Published: 16 May 2007
With Latin making a comeback in the classroom, Stravinsky's opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex could now conquer spheres beyond the concert hall, which is where it now resides as one of the greatest works of all time. Jean Cocteau's libretto was translated by a French priest into a curiously schoolboyish Latin, a language that Stravinsky chose for being "not dead but turned to stone". This gave him the distance he required to focus on the big, simple truths of Sophocles' story.
Lloyd Banks, ABC, Glasgow
Published: 15 May 2007
The reality of young black America may not mean much on the streets of Glasgow, but there are still parallels to be drawn between the work of the rapper Lloyd Banks - born in Baltimore, based in New York - and the lives of young Glaswegians.
Brett Anderson, Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Published: 14 May 2007
You might not have thought it, given his one-time image as king of the fey indie wastrels, but Brett Anderson puts up a hell of a fight live. Fronting Suede, he was at his best with his back against the wall: battling against sheet-rain at the Phoenix Festival in 1995, say, or struggling to leave an impression against rising tides of public indifference at the band's electrifying farewell shows in 2003.
