New Year’s Day concert from the Vienna Musikverein, live on BBC – this year, with a technology theme. Extraordinary: I never realised before that you could use the titles of Strauss dances to map the conversational topics of the smart people in Vienna, like trends in social media: for example, the Explosions-Polka of 1847, following the discovery of guncotton.
Last Tango in Halifax - third series on BBC TV. Another dense dose of family conflict and personal trategy, but the critics (such as Rebecca Nicholson) are right in pointing to the quality of Sally Wainwright's writing and the superb cast's acting in carrying us along, so that it somehow never seems unrealistic. I'm inclined to agree with the Guardian TV critic who said of Derek Jacobi's character: "I hope I'm like that at his age."
Boxers and Saints - linked pair of graphic novels by Chinese American Gene Luen Yang, set in China at the time of the Boxer rebellion. In one, a village boy whose region is being oppressed and humiliated by European foreigners and their Christian priests, learns martial arts and joins the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists; in the other, a village girl, whose personality and birth order (fourth) means she's seen as unlucky, joins a Christian community to escape her oppressive family life. Their stories intertwine, of course, and follow a tragic trajectory as the Boxers come to take on not only the foreign devils but the secondary devils of Chinese christians. Expertly and movingly executed.
Scheherezade, by Rimsky-Korsakov - recording by the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra. I first heard a track from this on ClassicFM, played by John Suchet at the special request of his (Turkish) dry cleaner, who had enjoyed it on a previous playing. It's a wonderful piece of music anyway, but I think this must be the definitive recording of it: this orchestra, under conductor Sascha Goetzel, is specialising in European-oriental crossover music, and so they're perfectly placed to bring out the orientalisms of the score. They do some instrument substitutions too, so for example the violin theme as Scheherezade begins each story is accompanied by a kanun, which gives it a magical other-worldly quality.
Broken Age - fabulous adventure game (or rather, the first half of one) from Tim Schafer (ex-LucasArts, Grim Fandango etc), beautifully realised for iPad. There are two parallel stories: in one, a boy lives alone on a spaceship in a kiddy environment maintained by an overprotective maternal computer and is striving to break out of the system's limitations and escape childhood; in the other, a girl is chosen to be one of the village maidens sacrificed to a monster (it's considered an honour, and the maidens dress up as cup-cakes to boost their monster-attractiveness) but she breaks with tradition by asking "why don't we kill the monster instead?" Obviously the two of them have to meet - but for what happens after they do so we'll have to wait for the second act, due out this year. Beautiful graphics, great writing (every dialogue choice delivers something worth hearing), top quality voice acting (including Elijah Wood as the boy), and excellent music; definitely one of my all-time favourites.
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