Music and Opera

Sir James MacMillan’s European Requiem, performed at the Proms on Sunday, isn’t about Brexit. The composer had to make this clear in a Radio 3 interview just before the broadcast, because the BBC was just itching to cast the work — a melancholy score, despite its thunderous drumbeats — as a lament for us leaving the EU. That would have been neat, given that the second half of the concert consisted of Beethoven’s Ninth, whose ‘Ode to Joy’ has been clumsily appropriated by Brussels. Incidentally, some Remainers in the audience chattered through the symphony’s first three movements, impatient for their Big Tune. I don’t know if there were any ancient

When you first encounter it, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis can sound like the Ninth Symphony with more singing but no tunes. But the more I listen to it, the more I agree with the composer that it’s his greatest work — or, at least, up there with the last two piano sonatas and his String Quartet Op. 131, my other nominees. Despite its titanic scale, the Missa solemnis inhabits their intimate sound world: it is built from the harmonically ambiguous motifs of Beethoven’s ‘third style’. Nothing in it is as catchy as the ‘Ode to Joy’. On the other hand, nothing in the Ninth reaches the spiritual stratosphere of the Benedictus,

The most compelling pop singers in music right now — at least in the branch where pop singers still play guitars — were on stage last week. The 1975, fronted by Matty Healy, finished the tour in support of their second album, a US and UK number one, with a headline show at the Latitude festival, the chosen spot for recreational drug-taking by kids who have just finished their GCSEs. Ezra Furman played his most prestigious London show yet, appearing at the Barbican as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of his label, Bella Union. Healy and Furman are very different — the one a genuine popstar, the other off

Grade: B – All criticism is pointless, I suppose, given the sheer magnitude of the Shawn Corey Carter machine — his billions of dollars, his millions of sales, his ubiquity. This is the rapper even whitey can git down to, big pal of the Obamas, bad-ass Bedford-Stuyvesant gangsta made good. But even when Jay-Z and the genre have been comprehensively subsumed by the mainstream, there is still stuff about it that grates. Not the familiar homophobia or the championing of criminality. Not even the misogyny — hell, if it’s misogyny you’re after, check out The Eagles. Crackers do misogyny just as vigorously. It’s the relentless, self-obsessed, cock-clutching braggadocio — and,

Boy is she fat, and getting fatter. I realise this is something we’re not meant to mention when talking about Beth — but it’s kinda the elephant in the room. Literally. And I worry about the lass. These days she makes Mama Cass look like Edie Sedgwick. Of course, we should accept her as she is — a lesbian-identifying, very hefty babe from good ol’ down-home Ar-kin-saw. Her difference, then, is part of the schtick, breaking the mould, etc. — and that’s just fine and (Jim) dandy, providing something palpably ‘different’ actually emanates from the stuff she does. That the proud revelling in difference is not merely a cosmetic exercise

As Kraftwerk took their 3D show around Britain last week, a document from 2013 surfaced online, purporting to be their requirements for car transportation while on tour, necessitated by ‘rather bad driving experiences in the recent past in various parts of the world’. Kraftwerk, it said, should only be driven by ‘suave gear changers (if car is not automatic)’ and ‘suave breakers’. Both radio and aircon should be turned off, and on no account should the driver talk to the band. It had the effect of making the Düsseldorf quartet — long since down to one original member, Ralf Hütter — look like grumpy old men who would rather be

When techno first appeared amid the urban wasteland of mid-1980s Detroit, its futuristic sound palette was inspired by the whirring and clanking of the Motor City’s defunct assembly lines. Early techno was darker and more hypnotic than its close cousin house, but you could still dance to it. There was still soul in the machine. The music brought people together on dance floors in abandoned warehouses, offering hope amid decline. By the end of the decade, thanks to the crossover hits ‘Good Life’ and ‘Big Fun’, techno had taken root in the UK. Europe and the world would follow. Jeff Mills belongs to the second wave of Detroit techno: the

Late on the Friday afternoon of The Great Escape — the annual three-day event for which the London music industry decamps to Brighton to spend three days drinking and trying to get into tiny venues to see new bands — two very young men stood outside a pub, making quite the impression. One, with bleached blond hair, yellow tinted sunglasses and livid red lipstick, wearing a black string vest, clutched a bottle of Mexican lager. The other, made up with huge rouge smears on his cheeks and heavy eyeshadow, wore a beret, a green faux-military tunic, and — naturally — an Elizabethan-styled ruff. You knew they were in a band;

Pop’s counterfactuals tend to be built on questioning mortality: what if Jimi Hendrix had lived? Or Buddy Holly? Rarely does geopolitics enter into the speculation. Nevertheless, there’s a case for arguing that the landscape of British pop would have been markedly different had Harold Wilson acceded to the wishes of President Lyndon Johnson and sent British forces to Vietnam. That’s worth contemplating now, ahead of the latest reissue — deluxe and expanded and remastered, as these things always are — of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released last week for the 50th anniversary of the original album. The Beatles — along with Pink Floyd, who were recording The Piper

Seven years ago I ripped the CD off the front of a music magazine and found myself in the thick of a Poulenc concerto that was being played as if life depended on it. Now Poulenc is the acme of laid-back and the solo instrument, the harpsichord, had been consigned to the junkshop before young Brahms was running errands for ladies of the Reeperbahn. This recording was, for me, an act of instrumental resurrection. So I tracked down the harpsichordist, Mahan Esfahani, by name, and took him to breakfast. He turned out to be young, gay, Iranian, Presbyterian, Stanford-educated, restlessly intellectual and altogether full-on. What’s not to like? In a

How about some queercore garage punk? PWR BTTM — the name means something empowering to do with buggery — are a young, gay, two-piece band from New York State who live apparently hectic lives. Their new album, Pageant, was released last week and a couple of days later they were kicked off their record label and current tour after allegations of sexual predation were made against the pantomimely camp singer, Ben Hopkins. The greatest surprise was that the complaints came from a woman. Their career is now in limbo. Hopkins denies the allegations, of course, claiming that he is a consensual and democratic kind of chap. But it’s all rather

Ah, Blondie. Those happy days of glorious power pop, chilly disco and rich, fruity vocals — Debbie Harry yearning away like a very bad alleycat on heat. ‘X Offender’, ‘In the Flesh’, ‘Picture This’ and that one where she’s in the phone booth, apparently gagging for it. People knock it, but the late 1970s wasn’t a bad time to be a teenager. And while Blondie may have been a rather calculating act, cleverly positioned on the fringe of punk and the fringe of pop and the fringe of disco and later even rap, they were at least likeable and the tunes were, largely, effortlessly and simplistically terrific. And then there