Mitsuko Uchida, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
The magic usually descends quickly in a Mitsuko Uchida recital but the opening Bach of this rescheduled Festival Hall concert – a pair of Preludes and Fugues from Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Klavier – took a…
A Conversation About The AMERICAN MUSICAL: The Rest Is Noise
Royal Festival Hall, Sunday 24 March 2013 12.30-1.30. In conversation about the American Musical in the first half of the 20th Century as part of “The Rest is Noise” series.… [Read More]
A Conversation With BETTY BUCKLEY: ‘Dear World’
The place is the elegant One Aldwych hotel and in a suite kindly provided by the management Broadway star Betty Buckley is in post workout mode chatting to Edward Seckerson about her return to the London stage…
Briefly…Trelawny of the Wells
Following on so swiftly from the stonking revival of A Chorus Line at the Palladium here comes another show business piece about the joys, disappointments, and heartaches of life upon the wicked stage. In the Donmar revival…
Philharmonia Orchestra, Gabetta, Ashkenazy, Royal Festival Hall (Review)
Death comes in many guises but in this ingeniously devised Philharmonia concert he most definitely did not have the last laugh. That was for Shostakovich and a curiously ticking time bomb of percussion which first surfaced in…
A Conversation With RENÉE FLEMING
Not many singers could entitle a recital album The Beautiful Voice and ensure that in every sense it lived up to its name. Renée Fleming’s now iconic album is shortly to have a successor and in this…
A Chorus Line, London Palladium (Review)
Even singular sensations grow older – yet A Chorus Line, which coined the phrase, seems ageless, so sure is it of its place in musical theatre history, so locked now into our theatrical consciousness. It is, no…
Briefly…Six Pictures of Lee Miller/ Lift
A weekend to restore one’s faith in the current evolution of music theatre. Jason Carr and Edward Kemp’s Six Pictures of Lee Miller (RADA) could hardly inhabit a more different place in the ever-changing universe of musicals…
Charpentier “Medea”, English National Opera, London Coliseum (Review)
Hell hath no fury… and in Medea’s case comes so precipitously that even her children must be taken from the room whenever her demons threaten an unscheduled appearance. That is but one of many telling details that…