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| | | | | Xenakis: Music & Maths review – visceral intensity takes us beyond theory | | by Andrew Clements May 30, 2022 | | CBSO Centre and The Exchange, Birmingham
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group marked the centenary of the Greek-French composer’s birth with a day that revealed why Xenakis’s music and significance endures With other events to mark this year’s centenary of Iannis Xenakis’s birth still thin on the ground in the UK, Birmingham’s day of workshops, talks and concerts, presented on the exact anniversary under the auspices of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, was a worthy tribute. Eight of the Greek-French composer’s works were performed, interspersed with the premieres of specially commissioned pieces. The title of the day, Music & Maths, emphasised the theorising behind his compositions, but what emerged most powerfully – as always with Xenakis – is the sheer visceral intensity of his works, which sets him apart from the other great European figures of his generation. Whether it is in the dense, curdled dissonances of the string writing in Ittidra from 1996, the wordless ullulations of the soprano soloist (the excellent Anna Dennis) in the 1977 Akanthos, or the tangled knots of wild counterpoint in Jalons, one of his greatest achievements, composed for Ensemble Intercontemporain in 1986, Xenakis always surprises. There’s something ancient, even primeval running through his music that contrasts so tellingly with the often convoluted techniques that generated it, and gives it a special charge. Continue reading... | | | | | The Lady of Heaven review – ambitious religious epic about Muhammad's daughter | | by Phil Hoad May 30, 2022 | | This wayward, occasionally handsome account of the story of Fatima is more interesting on paper than in practice This British-made epic earns a significant accolade: it is the first film to put the “face” of the prophet Muhammad on screen. No single actor is credited with playing him, or any of the other holy figures in his entourage. And, as a nervous initial disclaimer points out, their faces, often shown in dazzling sunbursts, are computer-generated. Presumably, this is enough to placate Islam’s prohibition on visual representation of the prophet, but this is a Shia-aligned film that is evidently a little more lenient on the issue. While claiming, as per the title, to be about Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah, this is largely focusing on his cousin and successor Ali. Director Eli King and writer Sheikh al-Habib attempt to give the Islam origin story a contemporary parallel: it has a framing sequence in which Laith (Gabriel Cartade), a young boy from Mosul, is orphaned when his mother is executed by Islamic State soldiers for teaching him a blasphemous song. Laith is adopted by a soldier from Baghdad, and the serviceman’s mother comforts the youngster by telling him the tale of the saintly Fatimah, whose example of strength she promises will keep him going in dark times. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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