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If it were in my remit I would give this ten stars, five for the dance and five for the brilliant music performed live by A Filetta. The piece is so clearly thought through that nothing seems indulgent or superfluous, from the exacting physical demands of the choreography and beautiful polyphonic Corsican choir, to the use of a mannequin which they pull off without it looking hackneyed. The pen is mightier than the sword, or is it. In the hands of religion the pen can be as destructive as any sword, as we all know. Faith is irredeemably bound to war and conflict and to death and even if we have faith and are devout the heaven we are promised may not be the paradise that we long for. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has created a masterpiece that combines the very best of dance and theatre and music. When you get to the bottom and see my five stars double it.

Concert Hall, Brighton Dome, 18 May
Rating:
Andrew Kay

This extraordinary young pianist manages to combine an almost clinical precision in his playing with a powerful poetry. Opening with Beethoven’s Waldstein he conjured from the keyboard a lush orchestral sound that filled the opera house. The following Brahms Ballades op.10 was lighter but no less impressive. After an interval he came back with Six Little Piano Pieces by Schoenberg that made me want to hear more. The final piece, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor, was a tour de force of technical skill but once again he balanced this with an impressively moving performance where the intricate complexities of the variations did not overpower the emotional power of the music. Two encores, a whisper of a piece by a Hungarian composer where he gently stroked the haunting music from the keys was followed by a roaring Chopin Waltz. Six courses of deliciously satisfying music.

Glyndebourne Opera House, 15 May
Rating:
Andrew Kay

No matter how I tried to love this new work from C de la B I failed. Based on a Spanish film that tells the story of the closing of a transvestite cabaret, I was perhaps expecting moments of sadness and of exuberant joy. All I got was sadness. Initially impressive in its simplicity and the poignant movement of the elderly performers who, when frozen, regained the elegance of their previous stage personas, it soon became repetitive. The soundscape, dotted with great songs, was also mournfully dark and droning. And where was the joy? Was their life so sad, so tawdry and so lacking in dignity. The vision of a stooped and overweight man in a sequined dress clomping down a red carpet told me only one thing and that was that their lives were wasted and futile. Surely there must have been some romance, some love and some happiness? Not in this drab and overlong production.

Concert Hall, Brighton Dome, 11 May
Rating:
Andrew Kay

Five performances for an audience of five. It’s intimate, really intimate and it’s about intimacy too. Not for everyone perhaps but I loved this confrontational group of works that will no doubt court controversy in the weeks to come. To talk of the content would be to destroy the work on every level. What I will say is that the intellectual content far outweighs the visual. 5×5 is a cohesive group of ideas that works well enough, but I did crave some more visual poetry. Last year’s one-on-one Basement experience was visually more satisfying but only Adrian Howell’s Foot Washing back then had the depth of this years work. All that said, I enjoyed a great deal of this, the harmony singing, the humour and the brazen cheek and I left feeling charged and stimulated.

The Basement, 10 May
Rating:
Andrew Kay