IPM roundup 40 Wigmore Hall: Sunwook Kim Oct 25; Alexei Volodin Nov 2; Martha Argerich and Alberto Portugheis December 12; Beatrice Rana Jan 16; Luca Buratto 23 Jan; Barbican: Daniil Trifonov Jan 21; ...Read More
The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century By Timothy Hyman Thames and Hudson 256 pp Ever since Tom Wolfe published his blistering polemic The Painted Word in 1975, it’s been a...Read More
“WE LEFT our native land thinking we carried no baggage, completely unaware of the biggest gift our country had bestowed on us: the gift of music.” So said Basel Rajoub, a Syrian composer and saxo...Read More
Japan’s Westernisation is only skin-deep. For musical proof of this, consider the eagerness with which the Japanese periodically forsake their hi-tech existence, and immerse themselves in their anci...Read More
Out, brief candle! As life nears its end, thoughts can acquire urgent clarity. This truth may not be particularly perceptible in literature, because novelists find endless ways of disguising it. But i...Read More
ON OCTOBER 31st, the lights on Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall spelled out “fertig”—“finished”. That heralded a monumental wave of relief, for the history of this crazily ambitious ...Read More
We in Britain have only seen the beginning of our government’s scorched-earth policy towards culture outside London. Unavoidable local authority cuts – unavoidable because the only alternative wou...Read More
Why should the sound of a consort of four viols be more moving than that of a string quartet? It goes against all logic. With its flat back, and played like a Middle-Eastern spike-fiddle, the v...Read More
Should we know the story behind the creation of a piece of music, or should we let it speak for itself? The British cellist Steven Isserlis poses this question in the liner note to a CD he has just re...Read More
The Wigmore Hall is running two Beethoven sonata cycles in tandem, at different speeds: while Igor Levit gets stuck into his cycle, Llyr Williams continues his in a more leisurely arc. And since in Oc...Read More