Arts
The power of hate
With seconds to spare, I think I have chanced upon my music book of the year. Such choices are always…
Sistema’s secrets
An explosive new book uncovers abuse at the heart of one of classical music’s most revered institutions. Damian Thompson investigates
Life force
‘Love of the human form’, writes the painter John Lessore, ‘must be the origin of that peculiar concept, the Life…
In from the cold
You won’t have heard of Peder Balke. Yet this long-neglected painter from 19th-century Norway is now the subject of a…
Chorus of approval
One of the growth areas of contemporary music is in setting sacred texts. It might be thought that I had…
Dance One last dance
I’m dashing between dance theatres at the moment and there’s just so much to tell you about. I could linger…
Rameau resurrected
The poor French. When we think of classical music, we always think of the Germans. It’s understandable. Instinctive. Ingrained. But…
Sin city
When to launch? For impresarios, this is the eternal dilemma. Autumn is so crowded with press nights that producers are…
Saints and sinners
Is Bill Murray fit for sainthood? Certainly his fans have him figure as some sort of lesser divinity, maybe one…
Ghost town
BBC1’s authentically spooky three-part ghost story Remember Me hasn’t yet revealed what’s really going on in that gloomy Yorkshire town.…
A dose of good sense
Each year the Reith Lectures come round as Radio 4’s annual assertion of intellectual authority, fulfilling the BBC’s original aspiration…
Culture buff
We’ve established that capital city festivals are for other people. Their principal purpose is to bring people into the city,…
Dance One last dance
I’m dashing between dance theatres at the moment and there’s just so much to tell you about. I could linger…
Chorus of approval
One of the growth areas of contemporary music is in setting sacred texts. It might be thought that I had…
Chorus of approval
One of the growth areas of contemporary music is in setting sacred texts. It might be thought that I had…
Death of a screenwriter
Cinema is tough right now for writers. Thomas W. Hodgkinson reports from the front line at the Austin Film Festival
Erotic review
It has been a vintage season for mannequins. At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, an exhibition called Silent Partners looks…
Bear necessity
‘Please look after this bear,’ reads the famous label hanging round Paddington’s neck, and this film does that, admirably, handsomely,…
Poor show
Bombay is now called Mumbai by everyone bar its residents, whose historic name (from the Portuguese for ‘beautiful cove’) has…
From the sacred to the secular
Terrorism; East-West diplomacy; nuclear war: John Adams’s operas have poured music into the faultlines of 21st-century global politics, and the…
Second coming
Earlier this month the Wigmore Hall was sold out for a Schubert recital by a concert pianist whose only solo…
Law of the jungle
One of the great benefits of having teenage children is that they force you out of your fuddy-duddy comfort zone.…
Sister act
She was the sequinned star of the airwaves back in the 1920s, the first preacher to realise the potential of…
Culture Buff
John Hearder was a society photographer whose studio and display window were on Castlereagh Street between Rowe Street and the…
Second coming
Earlier this month the Wigmore Hall was sold out for a Schubert recital by a concert pianist whose only solo…
