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Jan 16, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Flora Willson
Say what you will about El Sistema (and controversies continue over the political status and inner workings of the 50-year-old youth music programme), but one thing remains unequivocal: the ferocious energy of its flagship Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. For the first of two performances at Barbican as part of an anniversary European tour with its music director Gustavo Dudamel, the stage was as packed as the auditorium.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Flora Willson
Sometimes, the smallest gestures are those that matter most. A smile, a hand squeeze, a tentative step forward. These were the movements that brought James Joyce’s The Dead vividly to life in this production conceived for The Fourth Choir by director Séamus Rea, which saw a thoughtfully edited version of Joyce’s text (the final story in his collection The Dubliners) read by Niamh Cusack and interwoven with unaccompanied choral numbers. But “read” does Cusack a disservice.
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Dec 23, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Flora Willson
Operas don’t get more Christmassy than Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. Not so much in content – crushing poverty, a scary forest, a child-eating witch – as by venerable association since its world premiere on 23 December 1893. Long before it became a fixture of festive programming, the composer gifted early versions of the score to his fiancee for Christmas. Twice.
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Dec 16, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Flora Willson
Cymbal crashes start partway through the first movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No 9 and just keep on coming. Solos meander – violin, flugelhorn, cor anglais – as spare and cool as a modernist line drawing. Three saxophones flit about, accompanied by shivers of snare drum. The brass land in heavy blocks. There are only fleeting glimpses of the pastoral, Pimm’s-by-the-cricket Vaughan Williams of his best-known earlier works.
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Nov 15, 2024 | 
msn.com | Flora Willson
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Nov 15, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Flora Willson
A child speaks into total darkness: “This is my voice.” Clear articulation, delivery just slightly hurried. As we descend in a huddle through the auditorium of the Linbury theatre, other voices – older, more obviously gendered – speak the same refrain. Some sound confident (“this is my voice”, trumpets one), others less so. Some overlap, speaking almost in chorus. All are unmistakably individual. Three scrims hang in the main performance space.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Flora Willson
A huge eyeball in the wall of a classroom suddenly starts to swivel. A top-hatted man on stilts lurches into a bar and performs slow, ungainly circuits before disappearing followed by dancers dressed as rats. A woman is trapped in a bolt of cloth held taut by two rampaging horned figures, her features protruding through it – except when the cloth drops, another devilish dancer is in her place. A guest wearing the curved beak of the plague doctor stalks a Venetian carnival party.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
ca.style.yahoo.com | Louise Taylor |Barney Ronay |Jonathan Liew |Tanya Aldred |Robert Kitson |Lyndsey Winship | +3 more
Theatre writer Arifa Akbar meets the fans at Wembley before an American football game.Photograph: Sophia Evans/The ObserverPlenty unites the Guardian’s sports reporters and cultural critics. Both make a living observing the apex of physicality. They have to make sense of what they’ve seen at lightning speed to meet deadlines. So why not swap gigs for the day? The sports team were delighted to be working in warm venues; the critics unabashed about their disregard for the rules of the game.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Louise Taylor |Barney Ronay |Jonathan Liew |Tanya Aldred |Robert Kitson |Lyndsey Winship | +3 more
Plenty unites the Guardian’s sports reporters and cultural critics. Both make a living observing the apex of physicality. They have to make sense of what they’ve seen at lightning speed to meet deadlines. So why not swap gigs for the day? The sports team were delighted to be working in warm venues; the critics unabashed about their disregard for the rules of the game.
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Nov 3, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Flora Willson
On paper, it is an idea so obviously marketable it might have come straight from a record label boardroom: a special offer on celebrity pianists – buy one get one free! For while Yuja Wang and Víkingur Ólafsson number among classical music’s biggest names, we know them as soloists. In combination for the London stop of their duo recital tour, they predictably drew a more-than-capacity crowd, with extra seating spilling across the stage.
