Morrissey review – classic Smiths songs meet GB News-style talking points

Morrissey review – classic Smiths songs meet GB News-style talking points

O2 Arena, London Morrissey is in impressive voice and the old songs still retain their power, but the conspiracy theorising and nationalist rhetoric are miserable in all the worst ways It could almost be the 90s: at a sold out O2 Arena, a pink-shirted Morrissey and his five-piece band rally the crowd with Suedehead, each oscillating “why” roared en masse. It is as if his past two decades of inflammatory political activism hasn’t hurt his reputation. What’s more, things will soon pick up, he assures us, because his morphine has just kicked in. A smatter of laughter. Probably joking? Opiate allusions aside, the between-songs narrative is a classic tour-de-Moz. He stumbles from self-hype to castigating “jealous bitches” and his customary bete noire, the cancel culture that has so thoroughly deplatformed him that he has no choice but to stand on a big platform and tell 20,000 fans all about it. Though its insinuations appear lost on the crowd, his alignment with far-right talking points comes to the fore on recent single Notre-Dame, a repugnant synth-pop lament seemingly based on debunked (and broadly Islamophobic) conspiracies that arsonists started the 2019 fire at the Paris cathedral. “We know who tried to kill you,” he sings, addressing the cathedral itself. “Before investigations they said: there’s nothing to see here.” Continue reading...

Sinfonia Cymru / Laura van de Heijden review – quiet authority and effortless grace inspire

Sinfonia Cymru / Laura van de Heijden review – quiet authority and effortless grace inspire

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff The cellist moved up a gear during Tabakova’s concerto, as the fiery writing showed her at her virtuosic best Cellist Laura van der Heijden was last year’s recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society instrumentalist award, consolidating in style her BBC Young Musician win in 2012, when she was just 16. As a shining role model to musicians of her generation, her collaboration with the young professional talent of Sinfonia Cymru – here in string ensemble mode and on a short Welsh tour – was always going to be inspiring. Van der Heijden had assembled an unusual mix of music, opening with a series of pieces associated with the stuff of fairytale by way of prelude to the Cello Concerto by Dobrinka Tabakova. From Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Les Démons – plus foot-stamps and knee slapping for percussive effect – the sequence moved seamlessly through Grace Williams, Caroline Shaw, Hildegard von Bingen and Pablo Casals to Maurice Ravel in a persuasive and atmospheric flow. Disarmingly, Van der Heijden had placed herself not out front but in the position of principal cello; the quiet authority of her gestures and an easy rapport with Sinfonia Cymru’s leader Haim Choi, found her occasional solo lines – as in Casals’ Song of the Birds – emerging with effortless grace. Continue reading...