Hubris – or just greed?
DOWNLOAD THIS: ‘Our Father’, ‘Best Friend’. Inara George is the latest beneficiary/victim of rock’s dynastic urge, though at least she sought out other options – notably acting – before following in the footsteps of her late father Lowell George, songwriter and slide-guitarist with the seminal Seventies country-funk synthesists Little Feat. One suspects he was too busy on the apparently mandatory personalised clothing and footwear brands to spend more than a cursory moment at his music. Even if he had anything compelling to say, Pharrell doesn’t have the panache: he sounds like he believes rapping is no more than talking over beats. Worse, his fund of decent grooves appears to have been used up on production commissions for other artists, leaving just a smattering of weary, monotonous husks for his own material. Which is only excusable if you’re Brian Wilson, and most unwelcome from the former Neptune Pharrell Williams, whose career has slipped into precipitous artistic decline ever since he became convinced of his solo potential. Just about bearable as a guest on someone else’s track, he simply lacks the skills to carry an entire album on his own: even aided by contributions from Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, Nelly and Jay-Z, the charisma gap on this solo album is so cavernous it’s embarrassing.
The Mariinsky did it semi-staged, with transparent backcloth, a few props and the cast in street clothes. Good, forgettable fun, with Tatiana Pavlovskaya outstanding as the lovelorn museum guide, but Shosta-kovich’s Magic Flute it ain’t.Shostakovich on Stage ends tomorrow with ‘The Golden Age’ (0870 145 0200). Though rock’n'roll is to a large extent built upon unfettered ego, there is one kind of hubris that afflicts producers, persuading them that their talents extend to in front of the mic. Stylish enough in its grim portrait of a provincial Russian estate of the 1850s, it completely funks the big coups that Shostakovich made so much of musically: the murders, the seduction, the sexual bullying of the cook Aksinya, Katerina’s suicide on the road to Siberia – all fall as flat as yesterday’s tonic water.
The vodka strengths are few; they include Olga Sergeyeva’s cool, sardonic Katerina, warmly sung, though revealing a passionate nature ready to break out at the first provocation; and especially the orchestral playing under Gergiev.Cheryomushki is a 1950s romp about corruption in the Soviet housing market. Music of overpowering emotional and physical intensity does battle with cheap parody and crude literalism The bed music is both the coarsest and some of the best. Much of it was cut from Katerina, which thus becomes perfunctory at the very core of the drama.The production by Irina Molostova seems affected. Katerina has its champions as a distinct, mature version – including the Mariinsky’s musical director, Valery Gergiev.