Monthly Archives: January 2011

As an extravagant apology for having to be looked after while uncontrollably vomiting on the platform at Regents Park on Thursday, my suitably red-faced girlfriend bought me tickets to see Oval at Cafe Oto last night. What promised to be a great gig turned out to be something of an ordeal however, as a bewildered [...]

Approaching the review of any piece of music or work of art of any kind should, for anyone who has any ability at all to think compassionately, be a bit of a minefield. Reviewing is all about opinion – that is, realizing your own opinion and then attempting to convince people of its merit and [...]

On the surface, a sense of oppressive doom hung over the program of Prom 65 with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, led by Jonathan Nott. The central works in the first half were Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, written after a near fatal brain hemorrhage and Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, written following his wife’s affair with the painter Richard Gerstl. The [...]