Culture

By all accounts, the world première of Elgar’s Sea Pictures at the October 1899 Norwich Festival made quite a splash. Elgar conducted, and the soloist was the 27-year-old contralto Clara Butt – dressed in a silky, sinuous number which drew gasps in those corseted late-Victorian days. Elgar thought she looked ‘like a mermaid’; the critics, of course (of course!) confined themselves to the music. They reported that Elgar and Butt were called back four times, and the second of the five songs – the delicate ‘In Haven’, to words by Elgar’s wife Caroline Alice – was singled out for particular praise Interesting how tastes change.

The Beast in Me is one of those ‘taut psychological thrillers’ that everyone talks about in the office. This might sound disparaging – as it is, obviously – but I have to admit that, having succumbed in desperation (because, as usual, there is so little else on), I did find the show pretty addictive and unusually satisfying. What makes it stand out is that it doesn’t go for the obvious. Yes, its heroine – played by Claire Danes – is feisty, talented and capable. But she’s also whiny, uptight and really quite unsympathetic, as perhaps screenwriter Gabe Rotter intended when he gave her the weirdly repellant name Aggie Wiggs.

It was such an enticing programme, too. The Philharmonia had booked Evgeny Kissin, the last great piano prodigy of the Soviet era and one of the superstars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. And then there was the music: three Russian showpieces, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s enchanting and almost unplayed (in the UK, anyway) single-movement Piano Concerto. Better still, Kissin was down to perform Scriabin’s youthful Concerto in F sharp minor, a private passion that I’ve heard live only twice in four decades. Imagine a Russian Chopin, if Chopin knew how to orchestrate. Gilltburg has the agility and power of an old-school keyboard lion, though he uses it with Bach-like objectivity Too bad.

When Gurdain Ryatt, Ojas Adhiya, Milind Kulkarni and Murad Ali Khan take to the stage at Milton Court this Sunday they will be united by a common language: the tradition of Hindustani Indian classical music, rooted in the north of India. Ryatt and Adhiya’s job will be to keep beats circulating on their pitched, drum-like tablas, while Kulkarni’s harmonium will sustain drones, apparently towards infinity. Khan plays the sarangi, a string instrument famed for its uncanny invocation of the wavering of the human voice. Shankar’s tireless advocacy spawned a crossover culture that he felt too often sullied the very music he loved British audiences have a head start when it comes to appreciating this tradition.

Stravinsky’s The Firebird begins in darkness, and it might be the softest, deepest darkness in all music. Basses and cellos rock slowly, pianissimo, in their lowest register; using mutes to give the sound that added touch of velvet. Far beneath them rumbles the bass drum: a halo of blackness, perceptible only at the very edge of the senses. In Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, you felt your hairs tingle before you discerned a note. Seconds later, the very air within the hall seemed to be quivering with sensuous, engulfing bass warmth. You can be sure that Rattle anticipated that sensation; planned for it, in fact, from the moment that he confirmed this short British tour with his new orchestra.

The history of the male ballet dancer is a chequered one. In the early 19th century, he was the star of the show, albeit more as an acrobat and tumbler than fairy-tale prince. The vogue for sylph-like damsels floating in white tulle put paid to that, reducing him to the auxiliary role of porter and attendant. Then came the comet of Nijinsky, introducing a note of mysterious Slavic androgyny that left the male dancer suspiciously homosexual and prone to the ‘pink tights’ cliché. Nureyev and Baryshnikov cemented the exotic Russian connection, until the late 1990s when the allure of the musical Billy Elliot and Matthew Bourne’s version of Swan Lake opened ballet up to a generation of British boys who would otherwise have preferred kicking a football around.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac (Baron Victor Frankenstein) and Jacob Elordi (‘the creature’) and retells the basics of Mary Shelley’s story – man creates monster, man rejects monster, monster goes off on one – with high-camp sumptuousness. Del Toro’s spin is to include a redemptive arc, plus he throws in some invented characters. ‘The creature’, meanwhile, is portrayed with great sympathy, as a soulful, mistreated innocent. In other words, there’s no Boris Karloff lumbering around in that blazer a size too small with a bolt through the neck. It opens with a Danish expedition-ship stuck in the Arctic ice and the crew rescuing an injured Victor.

Ravel’s L’heure espagnole is set in a clockmaker’s shop and the first thing you hear is ticking and chiming. It’s not just a sound effect; with Ravel, it never is. He was an inventor’s son, half-Swiss, half-Basque, and timepieces, toys and Dresden figurines were in his soul. For Ravel, they seem to have possessed souls in their own right. ‘Does it not occur to people that one may be artificial by nature?’ he remarked, and few artists have shown such tenderness towards these small, lovingly made things that strive so tirelessly, and so hopelessly, to be alive. So that was something to think about, as Alexandra Cravero conducted the opening bars of this new production from Scottish Opera.