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Spectator
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
A latter-day exercise in Dada: Nature Theater of Oklahoma reviewed
What to make of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, which this week made its British debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall? The bare facts indicate that it's a 'crazy shit' performance group of some repute, the brainchild of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, established 19 years ago, based in New York, its weird name taken from Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika. Beyond that, it's an enigma. The title of its current show, No President, could suggest that satire of Donald Trump is intended, but if so, quite what is being implied remains obscure to me. All I can tell you is that to the accompaniment of recordings of The Nutcracker and Adele's 'Someone Like You', a deadpan narrator with a florid vocabulary relates the story of Mikey, a hapless security guard who, like Candide, undergoes a picaresque succession of trials and misadventures in search of love, happiness and success, pursued by demons and haunted by his venal lusts. This tale is enacted by a troupe of a dozen or so mute dancers in gym kit, on top of which they adopt dressing-up-box disguises. Prancing and jogging through parodied balletic manoeuvres, they convey their emotions through exaggerated cartoon gurning. Limp phallic prostheses and dry humping enhance some descents into sophomoric obscenity, and mysterious references are made as to what lies behind the red velvet curtain at the back of the stage. The show is probably best categorised as a latter-day exercise in Dada: wilfully silly, momentarily funny and rather too pleased with itself. The excessive length – two-and-a-half uninterrupted hours – may be part of the joke, but it's not a very good joke; there's so much repetition and the plot takes so many pointless shaggy-dog turns that I was on the verge of screaming for it to stop. The cast, to be fair, deliver it all with flair, and although a fair percentage of the audience walked out, those who persevered gave it an enthusiastic reception. With a sigh of relief, I turn to the less esoteric pleasures afforded by the Royal Ballet School's annual matinée at Covent Garden. This is always an important occasion: the future of classical dance is on show and at stake here, as controversy over the curriculum and teaching methods constantly agitate the profession. How can one justify putting children through a training so arduous and perilous? And what happens to the rest of their academic education? On the evidence of this performance I think we can rest assured. Nobody, at least, is wasting their time. In an exemplary programme embracing several genres, the school's 200-odd pupils between the ages of 11 and 19 did themselves proud – a tribute to expert coaching and perhaps some fresh air introduced by the new artistic director Iain Mackay. It seems invidious to pick out individuals when the overall standard is so high, but I'll be surprised if we don't hear more of Aurora Chinchilla, Tristan-Ian Massa and Wendel Vieira Teles Dos Santos. Opening the show was 'Aurora's Wedding', a conflation of the prologue and final scene of Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty. One can't expect teenagers to dazzle in this repertory, but I would mark their collective effort as cautious and scrupulous, with nice attention paid to the plastic movement of head, neck and shoulders, and the right ideas about precise footwork, clean body line and elegant partnering. Much more fun followed with Ashton's early masterpiece Les Patineurs, an adorably witty and choreographically ingenious picture of Victorian skaters, danced here with bags of charm A third section brought opportunities to let rip in five shorter works in jazz, modern and ethnic idioms, seized with style and gusto. Finally came the grand parade or défilé in which all the school's pupils assemble, year by school year, culminating in a magnificent kaleidoscopic tableau – a cue for wild cheers and moist eyes.
New Statesman
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
The earworms of Erik Satie
'A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.' Ian Penman, a post-punk music critic known for his experimental and often impenetrable style, opens his book on this lyrical quote from Jean Genet, before exploding into his self-consciously ludicrous, slightly naive, post-modernist style, which matches that of its subject, the composer Erik Satie (1866-1925). A punk avant la lettre, Satie was a societal disruptor dressed in a neat suit and bowler hat. In the light of Satie's anti-establishmentarianism, the commercial success of his music is his best joke. The king of light classics, Satie composed 'brief, evanescent piano pieces of pop-single length', the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes written between 1887 and 1895. They are hugely popular on easy-listening programmes and often used as advertising jingles. Muzak owes its being to Satie. He invented background music, calling it 'furniture music' and intended it to complete the decor for lawyers' and bankers' offices. When it was performed, he told people to walk about, eat and drink. When they sat still and listened, he waved his arms and shouted at them in frustration. The book's title suits the subject perfectly. Three Piece Suite. Are we talking the musical form? Are we talking upholstered horror-furniture? Or social saboteurs in three-piece suits? The answer, of course, is all of them. Contradiction was Satie's stock-in-trade. 'Vexations', a little piano piece lasting less than two minutes, must be played repeatedly, 840 times. At 16 hours of music, it is understandably rarely performed. John Cage did it 1963, and Igor Levit this April at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with Marina Abramović (predictably) in tow. Dualism rocked Satie's cradle. His mother was an English Protestant, his father a French Roman Catholic who hated both the English and Protestantism. His mother died when he was six. Shunted off to his paternal grandparents, little Eric was swiftly re-baptised into the Catholic Church. Schooldays passed as indolently as one of his idly rocking Gymnopédies, before gently slipping into studying music at the Conservatoire. Except he didn't. 'The laziest student in the Conservatoire,' read his report, 'but gets a lovely sound.' Chucked out, he took to playing piano in bars, where he effected his first reinvention. Eric became Erik. He grew his hair long, wore a frock coat and top hat and composed the famous pieces: the Gymnopédies (a word originally meaning naked games during Ancient Greek festivals that Satie chose to redefine as a fusion of gymnase and comédie), and the Gnossiennes (gnostic spliced with madeleine, which pre-dates Proust's famous madeleine passage in Swann's Way by quite a few years). Paris in the 1890s was shrouded in mysticism. Ectoplasm drifted up Haussmann's smart new boulevards. Tables turned, spirits rapped. Madame Blavatsky wore an amazing amount of eye make-up and Satie joined Sâr Péladan's Rosicrucian church, a hocus-pocus dress-up party obsessed with alchemy, philosophy, Wagner and the Holy Grail. Appointed Maître de Chapelle, Satie composed hymns in the manner of 'Chaldean Wagnerism' featuring flutes, harps and trumpets. His soundtrack to Péladan's play Le Fils des Étoiles would not disgrace a Cecil B DeMille movie. But Satie was not born to play second fiddle, and in 1893 he broke from Péladan's church to found his own. L'Église Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur (The Metropolitan Church of Jesus the Conductor). It sounds like something out of the Midwest Bible Belt. Its purported mission was to be a place for art to grow and prosper unsullied by evil, but its real work was to launch missiles against artistic enemies and 'infidel Anglicans' who would suffer Hell's most delicious tortures unless they returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church. Penman suggests that the rather horrible, pompous and pretentious communications that Satie put out might be a leg-pull, but I wonder. Occult sects are not known for their sense of humour. And besides, while Satie sampled many varieties of religion all his life, the need for a real, sincere faith seems to have been a constant throughout. During the brief existence of his church, Satie had his only love affair. Suzanne Valadon was a high-wire artist and painter. Whether they ever had sex is unclear. It's possible he was a celibate. He and she had next-door rooms; he composed Gothic Dances for her, and she painted a rather prim portrait of him. When she left him, he jettisoned frock coats, bought seven identical velvet suits, and transformed into 'the Velvet Gentleman'. He moved from central Paris to the suburb of Arcueil. No visitors were ever admitted to his room. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe 'Satie came every morning… and sat in my room,' wrote Cocteau. 'He kept on his overcoat (always perfectly spotless), his gloves, his hat which he wore pulled down almost to his monocle, his umbrella never left his hand. With his free hand he would cover his mouth, which curled when he spoke and laughed. He came from Arcueil on foot. There he lived in a small room, in which, after his death, under a mountain of dust, were found all the letters his friends had ever written him. He had not opened one…' Music took hold of Satie's soul during his childhood. He received lessons from the local organist who implanted a passion for early church music and Gregorian chant that never left him. His poor performance at the Conservatoire was due to him bunking off to Notre Dame to listen to the music he loved in its proper architectural setting. New, non-ecclesiastical influences only opened up when he got to the avant-garde experimental cabarets like the Le Chat Noir and met fellow composer Claude Debussy, who was also struggling to get out from under the heavy influence of Wagnerism. Out went Sturm und Drang. In came beguiling melodies conjuring lovers meandering in a shady lane, or rocking on the Seine's pretty café boats. He was composing the musical equivalent of the art of the time: sound-pictures of the untroubled arcadia created by the impressionists on canvas, and conjurations of the delicate, associative literary suggestion of Mallarmé and the symbolist poets. The inevitable break with Debussy came when Debussy orchestrated the Gymnopédies to great acclaim. This and the flight of Valadon led to musical drought. It picked up again when he was approaching 40 and his father died. He went back to school to study early church music in greater depth, immersing himself in counterpoint and polyphony, Bach and Palestrina. The Velvet Man transformed into City Gent: bowler hat, stiff collar, furled umbrella and sober suit. He joined the Communist Party, became a pillar of the community in Arcueil and was decorated for civic services. In 1911, Satie was suddenly 'discovered'. He was in his mid forties when he was taken up by Ravel (another composer of short earworms). Other disciples popped up, calling themselves 'Les Six', also known as 'Les nouveaux jeunes'. Intent on unhorsing impressionism, which was now old hat, their music was influenced by cubism and surrealism. Satie was also embraced by the wider circle of rising avant-garde stars: Cocteau, Picasso, René Clair, Picabia, Brâncuși and Man Ray. In 1917, he composed the music for Parade for the Ballets Russes, with sets by Picasso, scenario by Cocteau and choreography by Léonide Massine. Satie's score included parts for foghorn, typewriter, milk bottles and a pistol. It was a succès de scandale. Late blooming continued with the 1924 short dadaist film Entr'acte made in collaboration with Clair and Picabia. Written to be shown during the interval (entr'acte) of the ballet Relâche (which translates to 'show cancelled'), in the event, the show actually was cancelled, due to the unfeigned indisposition of the lead dancer. Real life aped their jape! The trio howled with laughter. The movie they were making was slapstick at breakneck speed, surrealist before surrealism was born; Charlie Chaplin, the Goons, Monty Python, punk. A canon fires a huge shell that collapses like a soufflé. Balloon heads inflate, deflate. A runaway hearse is pulled by a camel. Matchsticks dance, boxing gloves levitate, top-hatted seducers take up attitudes. Satie wrote the music frame by frame: it is hectic and forgettable. Cirrhosis of the liver killed him the following winter. He died peacefully, in the bosom of the Church that he had never actually left. His purported last words were suitably ambiguous: 'Ah, the cows…' The book Erik Satie: Three Piece Suite is unsurprisingly divided into three parts. Part one, the shortest, is about Satie; it skitters selectively, mostly around his life. Part two is three times as long. Headed 'Satie A-Z', the alphabet contains such gems as 'A is for Arcueil' (where Satie lived, remember?) noting that the place name 'contains a + u + e + i, but not a single 'o''. Wow! We also marvel at the insight that Satie is satire spelled without the 'r'. Shall we just tactfully pass over this section? The final section, headed 'Satie Diary', is again longer than the section devoted to the man himself. This is no surprise. We have already deduced that Penman is insanely self-important and deliciously un-self-aware. The diary regales us with an inconsequential daisy chain of maybe-Satie-related musings dated between January 2022 and October 2024. We wonder, among other things, why no one told him that other people's dreams ceased to interest us decades ago? Satie was marvellous. An extremely focused revolutionary thinker and composer dedicated to quiet provocations. His earworms have burrowed their way into our brains, not only musically but culturally too. His work loosened the rigid authority of the grandiose, questioned outdated structures, rules and assumptions; reset the kaleidoscope. It is entirely right that a book should be published to commemorate and celebrate the centenary of his death. Just not this book. Sue Prideaux's 'Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin' (Faber & Faber) won the Duff Cooper Prize Erik Satie: Three Piece Suite Ian Penman Fitzcarraldo, 224pp, £12.99 Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from who support independent bookshops [See also: Let Kneecap and Bob Vylan speak freely] Related
Times
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
George the Poet/Chineke! review — the climate crisis in words and music
George the Poet isn't really a climate activist, and he knows it. Appearing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London as part of the Southbank's ambitious Multitudes festival, in a concert billed as a meditation on the climate emergency, the spoken word artist established a narrative in which he had been commissioned to say nice things about nature. He entered wielding a laptop from which he 'read' his 'drafts' and took Zoom calls. He code-switched from his easy north London accent to a chirpy corporate RP, to face eager PRs. It was a clever setup for some slightly fuzzy poems on the natural world — nevertheless recently released as an album. In any case, they paled in comparison to the tighter, more informed, more fervent
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Maria Tipo, Italian pianist acclaimed for her interpretations of Bach, Scarlatti and the Romantics
Maria Tipo, who has died aged 93, was an Italian pianist revered for her brilliant articulation, immaculate precision and admirable control of the instrument; she was among the first European pianists to bring the complete Bach Goldberg Variations to the concert platform inspired, she said, by the playing of Glenn Gould. The Goldberg Variations were at the heart of a 1969 Wigmore Hall concert in which a Daily Telegraph critic noted that her 'excellent finger technique and perfectly poised, effortless-sounding part-playing told immediately and strongly in her favour'. While purists derided her 'Bach-maninov' approach to Baroque music, she was one of the great contrapuntalists, attracting acclaim for her interpretation of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and Muzio Clementi both in concert and on disc. Yet Maria Tipo, a tall, sultry-looking blonde, did not consider herself a specialist in any particular composer. Her performance of four Chopin studies at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1970 was a 'tour de force'; her account of Beethoven's First Piano Concerto with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra was 'vivacious and sparkling'; and the impression given by her Schumann recording for EMI was, noted Gramophone, 'of an artist who takes whatever she plays very much to heart'. Maria Tipo was born in Naples on December 23 1931; her first piano lessons were with her mother, Ersilia Cavallo, a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni, and she made her public debut at the age of 4. Her parents, however, refused to pass her off as a child prodigy and took her to study in Rome with the elderly Alfredo Casella, who gave lessons in his dressing gown, and Guido Agosti, another Busoni student. In 1949 she won the Geneva Piano Competition. Three years later Arthur Rubinstein heard her at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, where she came third, and wrote: 'She is not only a complete pianist, but she has the most exceptional talent of our time.' The impresario Sol Hurok launched her on a whirlwind tour of North and South America, including an exhausting 125 concerts in three months. As a result, it was 1967 before her London debut, the long-anticipated occasion moving a Daily Telegraph critic to raptures over the 'vitality and reverence… crystalline ornamentation… brilliant and compelling'. Marriage, family and a weariness with travelling limited Maria Tipo's career. But on returning to the US in 1991 after a hiatus of 32 years she was hailed as the 'Neapolitan Horowitz', after the mercurial American pianist Vladimir Horowitz's long absences from the concert hall. She was having none of it. 'He was Horowitz. I am from Naples,' she told Harold Schonberg in The New York Times. British audiences were less fortunate: her last appearance here appears to have been a 1973 recital in Cardiff. 'Beethoven's Piano Sonata No 3 was full of character and Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No 5 both brilliant and lyrical,' observed the critic Kenneth Loveland. She settled in Florence, teaching at the Conservatory and later the Fiesole School of Music; her students included the Argentine pianist Nelson Goerner. By her 70th birthday, she told an Italian newspaper, she no longer felt the need to play endlessly. 'You travel, you eat, you sleep alone. There is the concert, yes, but it only lasts a couple of hours, and then you are alone with yourself again,' she said. Maria Tipo's two marriages, to the guitarist Alvaro Company and the pianist Alessandro Specchi, were 'important slices of life', though both were dissolved. She had a daughter, the violinist Alina Company, from her first marriage. Maria Tipo, born December 23 1931, died February 10 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Guardian
29-01-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Radical statement or eyesore? Japan's divisive brutalist buildings
Emerging after the second world war, Japan's brutalist architecture is characterised by its geometric shapes, functionality and unconventional use of concrete – which is often left unfinished to showcase the material's textures and imperfections. Paul Tulett traveled the country to photograph extraordinary examples. 'Brutalist architecture in Japan might not ruffle feathers locally but it's considered divisive elsewhere,' he says. Brutalist Japan by Prestel publishing can be purchased here Paul Tulett: 'Brutalism outside of Japan is like Marmite. Love it or hate it. Some find it refreshingly raw – an honest counterpoint to contemporary glass-based disingenuous attempts at state transparency. Others are reminded of communism or when the UK nearly slid down the pan in the 1970s. Having failed to do the most basic research prior to moving to Okinawa, I was pleasantly surprised by the preponderance of brutalism here and the absence of negative associations' 'The general line is that the brutalism here is born out of necessity, as Okinawa is seasonally battered by typhoons. Homes must be robust and 90% of new dwellings are concrete. Swift adoption of the material was prompted by postwar reconstruction needs. We also need to factor in concrete's resistance to termites – pests greedy for the traditional material of wood. Then there are earthquakes and a damp climate' 'Weathering and deterioration of concrete can lead to stains, cracks and crumble that upset some. Intended radical philosophical statements become eyesores. With hindsight, I became concrete-obsessed at a young age. During a school trip to London, I envisaged a battalion of Star Wars stormtroopers pouring from Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Hayward Gallery and the National Theatre. A sure gauge of whether something is brutalist or not is this: would it look good in a sci-fi movie?' 'To the haters, brutalism reflects the increased intrusion of government and state power. It is no accident that brutalist architectural forms often harboured state departments. Brutalist buildings afford sobering historic reflection – much like the preservation of communist statues in former Soviet states' Photograph: Paul Tulett 'This residence reflects the philosophy that true architectural harmony is achieved not by bending the land to our will, but by listening to its whispers. Amid the rampant uniformity where cities clone themselves, losing their inherent voice, this home seeks to preserve the memory of the terrain, embracing the spirit of the place. The building's form, an organic response to the site, eschews the aggressive imposition of the flat and the straight for convenience's sake' 'Darth Vader's holiday home? This striking complex features affordable housing stacked above a ground-floor elderly day care centre. It models Okinawa's social aspect of planning. The reverse inequality theory, foundational to Nago City's 1973 Comprehensive Plan, challenges development strategies focused solely on income growth, focusing instead on community-centred urban planning. In Okinawa, where communal ties and collective wellbeing are highly valued, such approaches are essential' 'This silhouette, a composition of bold geometric lines and the stark honesty of exposed concrete, channels the brutalist ethos. Its colossal, forthright forms stand in sharp relief to Kyoto's delicate tapestry. Yet, within its robust frame, the structure nurtures the flexible, organic essence of 'metabolism' – a Japanese architectural vanguard of the 1960s. The design, a tessellation of modular units and transformable spaces, breathes the metabolist vision of perpetual evolution' 'It has been argued that concrete is the 'natural choice' of construction material in Japan as it resonates with the half-a-millennium-old practice of sukiya – the considered composition of raw and rough natural materials. The material expression of concrete's rawness is deemed to chime with an almost genetic appreciation for an elemental, unrefined aesthetic. Apparently, the Japanese have a unique long experience with wood, pottery and stone, but for what people are these not traditional materials? I can only think of the Inuit' 'Situated within Komazawa Park, this tower had to support a substantial 33-ton water tank above ground, which was essential for supplying water throughout the park. It also accommodated an antenna for television broadcasts. Below ground, the structure housed a general electric room, machine room, broadcast room and telephone exchange. And it played a pivotal role in controlling traffic within the park while serving as a commemorative landmark' 'This station emerges like a scene from a sci-fi odyssey. An architectural spaceship, launched in 1995, it defies its historical backdrop with a daring leap into futurism. The station is a stargate to the storied city of Uji and greets travellers not with wooden torii gates, but with a concrete vault that arcs like the heavens above a distant planet. The design is audacious, a semicircular cocoon that dares to embrace both the circle's Zen-like simplicity and the boundless possibilities of the cosmos' 'The exclusive suite garden here showcases the gardener's artistry with a Kyoto stone pathway reminiscent of scattered hailstones, encouraging a moment of pause and reflection. By presenting the Japanese experience, I hope to challenge the stereotypical negative attacks levelled at brutalism more broadly. The aim is to provoke thought about examples of brutalism closer to you. With understanding comes appreciation.' You can see more of Tulett's work at @brutal_zen
