Lee Miller, Tate Britain review - an extraordinary career that remains an enigma

★★★ LEE MILLER, TATE BRITAIN An extraordinary career that remains an enigma

Fashion photographer, artist or war reporter; will the real Lee Miller please step forward?

Tate Britain’s Lee Miller retrospective begins with a soft focus picture of her by New York photographer Arnold Genthe dated 1927, when she was working as a fashion model. The image is so hazy that she appears as dreamlike and insubstantial as a wraith.

Classical CDs: Vitamins, kings and magic spells

A neglected ballet score, romantic piano concertos and contemporary British music

 

Brahms LevitBrahms: Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Solo piano works Igor Levit (piano), Wiener Philharmoniker/Christian Thielemann (Sony)

Visit from an Unknown Woman, Hampstead Theatre review - slim, overly earthbound slice of writer's angst

★★ VISIT FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, HAMPSTEAD THEATRE Slim, overly earthbound

Christopher Hampton's love of Stefan Zweig's text becomes a drawback

Who was Stefan Zweig? It's likely that it's mostly older folk who studied German literature at A-level who have encountered this superb Viennese writer in his native language, though his short story from 1922, Letter to an Unknown Woman, eventually emerged as a starry Hollywood film in 1948.

Classical CDs: Herd girls, mojitos and mariachi

CLASSICAL CDS A Finnish conductor remembered, French ballet, contemporary chamber music

A Finnish conductor remembered, plus French ballet, contemporary chamber music and a string quartet playing jazz

 

Paavo Berglund boxPaavo Berglund: The Warner Edition (Warner Classics)

Roderick Williams, Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review - sunshine and serenity

★★★★ RODERICK WILLIAMS, NASH ENSEMBLE, WIGMORE HALL Sunshine and serenity

A quicksilver 'Trout', and both Mahlers in mellow mood

The Nash Ensemble’s concerts dedicated to “Beethoven and the Romantics” not only trace the flowering of the Romantic spirit in music from the Vienna of the 1800s through a continent and across the century. They also give a place at the top table for works by once-sidelined helpmeets of the movement’s giants: Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler.

Mayerling, Royal Ballet review - a masterpiece of storytelling, darkly gripping

MAYERLING, ROYAL BALLET A masterpiece of storytelling, darkly gripping

Kenneth MacMillan's royal-family-in-death-spiral dance drama reconfirms its potency

Although the loss of its 96-year-old royal patron can hardly have come as a surprise, Covent Garden has been slow to register it. The gold-embroidered ERs on those luscious red velvet stage curtains remain in place, and when Wednesday night’s audience was invited to stand for the playing of the National Anthem, the uninvited vocal response was heard to “send her victorious”. Old habits die hard.

Measure for Measure, Sam Wanamaker Theatre review - this problem play is a delight

★★★★ MEASURE FOR MEASURE, SAM WANAMAKER THEATRE This problem play is a delight

Blanche McIntyre regenders the Duke and relishes the London low-life

Measure for Measure may be the quintessential Shakespeare “problem” play, but just what has earned it that epithet remains a puzzle. Each generation approaches the matter from its own perspective. The developments of recent years, #MeToo most of all, have given new resonance to one of its central themes, the imbalance of law over nature and the quality of justice, but the play’s “resolution”, if it can even be called that, leaves the questions open.