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A rather disappointing loss of plot
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MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
Clark with the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO)
Barbican
TECHNO polymath Chris Clark reinvents himself as a classical composer with latest album Playground In A Lake, a work that saw him learn how to read and write sheet music before producing, which he performs for the first time with an orchestra.
The album feels like a continuation of his impressive soundtrack work – The Last Panthers, Kiri Variations and Daniel Isn’t Real – and is an elegiac journey that he describes as “a story about real climate change, but told in mythological terms.”
There are moments of beauty and awe, where the juxtaposition of gentle strings with electronic dystopian dissonance on Entrophy Polychord perfectly captures an imagined futurescape, producing what you would expect from a collaboration between an electronic artist and an orchestra.
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