Ideas in music

This week on CW, Sarah Boyes reviews the ENO’s current London production of Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s opera The Passenger - composed in 1968 and concerned with the legacy of the Holocaust - arguing that the piece is best considered as a musical work without the historical baggage of its subject matter. Paul Kilbey reviews Keith Burstein’s Manifest Destiny 2011 at the King’s Head Theatre, another opera with a political burden. He also reviews the recent John Cage exhibition on London’s South Bank, and the associated concert by Apartment House, arguing that Cage deserves to be considered as a serious composer as well as an ideas man.

Meanwhile, Nicky Charlish reviews Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement at the Royal Academy of Arts.

30 September 2011