Categories: places, art, concerts
Tags: London, music, culture, art
Date: 31 August 2006 12:08:44
Slightly belatedly, here are the links to some of the culture I managed in August (just like old times!).
The Kandinsky exhibition at Tate Modern was great, although there was so much there that I wanted to take in that by the time I got to the last room I was a bit Kandinsky-d out. I also preferred the earlier stuff (his early landscapes, hinting at abstraction but still recognisable), so probably zipped round the last couple of rooms faster than I would have done otherwise. I did enjoy though seeing the early stuff so that it was possible to recognise shapes in his more abstract works which previously I would have just thought were shapes but now could recognise as the Angel sounding the trumpet for the Last Judgment (or whatever). By the end I started seeing things in all the shapes though (at one point I was sure I'd seen a Dalek), which I think spoilt it a bit - sometimes you just have to stop over-analysing and looking for meaning and just appreciate it as a picture.
I also forgot to mention that I went to a Prom concert, for the first time in 20 years (I never did manage to go all the years I lived in London, though I was always full of good intentions). It was Prom 53, the London Philharmonic conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, plus the London Philharmonic Choir and the Philharmonia Chorus. The opening piece was the UK premiere of "A Relic of Memory" by Mark-Anthony Turnage, a composer I'd never heard of before so I really didn't know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised - it wasn't plinky plonky at all (that's a proper term - I have a music degree you know) - and I thought the choir were excellent. It took fragments of texts from Shakespeare and the Requiem Mass, and in parts was really rather beautiful. They then did the Prokofiev 2nd Piano Concerto, the soloist (Nikolai Lugansky) was amazing. Then after the interval was Rachmaninov's choral symphony "The Bells" which I thought was lovely (again a work I wasn't very familiar with). We (my friend S and I) sat right up in the gods, so we had a wonderful view of the orchestra, choir and soloists, as well as getting a great sense of the Albert Hall as a whole. I'm sure promenading is great fun and all, but we were able to take a picnic up there and loll while we listened, and it was just great. Why on earth did I leave it 20 years?!