The Engine

JOYCE DIDONATO AT THE WIGMORE HALL, LONDON, 28th January, 2010  Last night I was at the Wigmore Hall to see an American soprano, Joyce DiDonato, a Yankee presumably of Italian origin but actually an Irish-American (real name: Joyce Flaherty). She sang some anitche arie, mostly of Italian origin, but some Italian song settings by Beethoven while he was a student of Salieri. The original poems were by Metastasio, whom Beethoven also met in Vienna. DiDonato's apparantly a big figure Stateside, now to be found in the Wigmore Hall, London, as the Royal Festival Hall presumably becomes oversubscribed. Also the audience in the Wigmore Hall is probably more musically sophisticated, something DiDonato alluded to throughout, in fact she seemed sometimes a bit over-awed.  Turning up early is a good idea in order to lap up the ambience. In the bar there were many photos of the greats: Jacqueline du Pre, Benjamin Britten, Yehudi Menuhin etc. It felt like a brush with history, alt...

EVA HESSE AND KATJA STRUNZ AT THE CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE  Katja Strunz (1970-), a contemporary concept artist and sculptor living in Berlin, has created an exhibition of brass musical instruments stuck into metal drainpipes. Some of the instruments are decrepit, others are more recent. Some are identifiable as typical brass instruments, trumpets, trombones, horns, others more fanciful, bizarre, almost Daliesque creations. Most of the instruments are wired for sound. Low pitched metallic grind music plays constantly, sometimes interrupted by higher pitched sounds that tremble and modulate. Pieces of paper are strewn on the floor saying: "Times falling and folding over each other." The blurb at the entrance to the exhibition tells us that Katja Strunz has created the "sound of the Pregeometric Age", whatever that is. This reviewer found the exhibition itself to be a tad derivative of surrealism, Dali, whatever.  Eva Hesse (1936-1970) was a Jewish German Americ...

TURNER AND THE MASTERS, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON  J.M.W Turner (1775-1851), visionary founder of the Turner Prize, is given another lease of life with an exhibition examining artist jealousy. Jealousy, a fundamental emotion underpinning civilisation itself, perhaps providing the motor for art, innovation, even face stamping and acts of war. Turner is poised somewhere between all of these, an immensely ambitious young artist who wanted to be better than the Masters.  He realised, though somewhat immodestly, that he was the major figure in painting of his day.  The exhibition details in some cursory then exhaustive way, Turner's palpable anxiety of influence, a creative dynamo that partly consisted of jealousy, grudging admiration, actual influence, sometime plagiarism, outrageous copying and everything else in between. Turner inherited his passion for sunsets, for warm, golden, seemingly oriental or mediterranean light from Claude Lorrain (1604-1682). His intense admi...