Philharmonia Orchestra, Muti, Royal Festival Hall

Italian maestro comes back to the fold for 65th anniversary celebrations

If all orchestras inspire a sense of loyalty to some degree, then the Philharmonia perhaps does it better than most. Mackerras is still performing with them, 54 years after he first conducted the orchestra; so is Maazel, who has clocked up 41 years, on and off. There’s Ashkenazy and Dohnányi. And then of course there’s Riccardo Muti, who appears to have been given the unofficial title of conductor-in-chief of anniversaries.

Maurizio Pollini, Royal Festival Hall

The great Italian gives preludes and etudes old-school brilliance

Was it Chopin’s birthday or wasn’t it? To be honest, no one at last night’s Royal Festival Hall concert probably gave a damn, so wrapped up were they in Maurizio Pollini’s playing. And what playing it was too. The man just sits down and gets on with it – there’s none of that airy-fairy flamboyance and arm waving that certain younger pianists seem unable to perform without. This was an unapologetically old-school concert. Pollini shuffled on in his tails (who wears those any more?), plonked himself at the piano, and had finished the first of Chopin’s 24 Preludes before most of the audience had settled back for the ride.

Everybody's Fine

Tears of emotion or laughter? Robert De Niro's in search of family togetherness

It's a tough time these days for mothers in Hollywood, who are either dead, as a result of which they figure in the story only as an absence, or so scarily alive that their children would be better off without them: cue Precious and Mo'Nique's inevitable walk to the Oscar podium. The by-product of that first phenomenon has been various films about dads belatedly connecting with their kids. Clive Owen bonded with his two young sons in The Boys Are Back, and now it's Robert De Niro's turn to go in search of filial sustenance in Everybody's Fine. Does he succeed? Well, let's just put it this way: The film's title is for the most part not ironic.

It's a tough time these days for mothers in Hollywood, who are either dead, as a result of which they figure in the story only as an absence, or so scarily alive that their children would be better off without them: cue Precious and Mo'Nique's inevitable walk to the Oscar podium. The by-product of that first phenomenon has been various films about dads belatedly connecting with their kids. Clive Owen bonded with his two young sons in The Boys Are Back, and now it's Robert De Niro's turn to go in search of filial sustenance in Everybody's Fine. Does he succeed? Well, let's just put it this way: The film's title is for the most part not ironic.

Ottorino Respighi, the forgotten composer

Why the Italian composer's reputation needs rescuing

The latest subject in the BBC Four series of composer portraits by Christopher Nupen is Ottorino Respighi. One of the most unfairly neglected major composers of the first half of the 20th century, his reputation has suffered less from not being considered at all, but for having been confined to his trilogy of tone poems that evoke respectively the Fountains, the Pines and the Traditional Festivals of Rome. Nupen's film, made in 1982, puts a welcome case for his more challenging but less well-known work.

theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Antonio Pappano

On his life and loyalities divided between Rome and London

Antonio Pappano (b. 1959) enjoys the best of two opulent worlds. At the Royal Opera House in London (now his home city), he's well stuck in to his seventh season as music director, basking in popularity and plaudits previous incumbents could only have dreamt of. In Rome, he's director of the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, a post he took up in 2005.

theartsdesk in Rome: Building the Future, Slowly

Piano, piano: Rome still isn't being built in a day

The rapturous reception for Zaha Hadid’s groundbreaking, breathtaking new confection in Rome, Il Museo dell’Arte del XXIesimo Secolo - the 21st-Century Art Museum (MAXXI for short) - has reopened for the umpteenth time one of Italy’s favourite cultural debates. Why the hell does it take so long to build anything decent in our capital city, especially when we have one of the finest traditions - if not the finest - in architecture, civil engineering and construction, of anywhere in the whole world?

theartsdesk in Milan: Death of a Quiz Show Host

Italy mourns Silvio Berlusconi's TV alter-ego

“Guarda, è come se fosse morta la regina Elisabetta, sai?” I didn’t really need the comparison with the hypothetical demise of our own beloved monarch to be spelled out for me by my partner, a somewhat reserved professor of Paediatric Neurology at one of Rome’s leading hospitals, in order to drive home the deep shock engendered by the sudden death of Italy’s best-loved veteran TV compère on the collective psyche of a nation.
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