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- Tom Service on how the daring, experimental London Sinfonietta made it to 40Today
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Fortieth birthdays are always hard. Are you 40 years young, or getting long in the tooth? When the London Sinfonietta started out in 1968, it was the only ensemble of its kind anywhere in the world: a place where young composers could hear their music played alongside modernist greats. The group's first-ever programme, in January 1968, looks bizarre to anyone who has been to a Sinfonietta gig in the past decade or so: music by Hans Werner Henze, the world premiere of John Tavener's The Whale, Richard Strauss's conservative and inoffensive Symphony for Wind. These days, the Sinfonietta wouldn't touch Richard Strauss with a bargepole. A concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London tonight shows how far they have come: contemporary classics from Harrison Birtwistle and John Adams, alongside eight first performances.
The Sinfonietta was dreamed up by a group of twentysomething young turks - conductor David Atherton, impresarios Nicholas Snowman and Andrew Rosner - and quickly became a
- Pop review: MGMT, Shepherd's Bush Empire, LondonToday
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MGMT have had a good 2008. Their debut album, Oracular Spectacular, has been heaped with praise. Strategic appearances at summer festivals won them legions of indie-kid fans, and sold-out gigs are becoming the norm. The second of two packed London shows - "the last time we're going to play here for a long time," said singer Andrew VanWyngarden - felt like not just a consolidation of their year's work but a graduation to something solid and long-term.
The acid test was the audience's reaction to something they probably weren't expecting. The sound MGMT devised on Oracular Spectacular - Bee Gees meets Prince in swirling four-minute splashes - had primed us for a series of psychedelic starbursts. But what we got was prog rock. Deep within each twiddly freak-out was a shimmering disco-pop core, but this was prog at its self-engrossed proggiest. The previous night, VanWyngarden and keyboardist partner Ben Goldwasser had dressed as "pagans" to mark Thanksgiving. They didn't do that tonight, but it's not too much of a stretch to see ho
- Pop review: Ida Maria, Scala, LondonToday
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Scala, London The unfortunate impression is of the office bore who feels obliged to remind colleagues of just how 'mad' he is
- Classical review: Alexander's Feast, City Halls, GlasgowToday
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City Halls, Glasgow Conductor Richard Egarr presided over a performance shaped with considerable delicacy, writes Rowena Smith
- Obituary: Rob PartridgeToday
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Obituary: Influential music publicist and writer, he guided Bob Marley, U2 and Tom Waits