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Posts from the ‘Review’ Category

Apr 26

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Madrid – Restaurant focus: Va de Baco and Ølsen

As far as gastronomic finesse goes, Madrid is not as renowned as some of its neighbouring Spanish cities. However the buzz word around Madrid is inevitably tapas, and an innovative approach to tapas is what Madrid does best. Upon arriving in Madrid, late on a Friday night, we knew that many of the most popular tapas bars would already be heaving with the hip young Madrillanean crowd.

Aperitif, croquetas and ensaladilla rusa

One of my favourite tapas bars is Lateral in the Plaza de Santa Ana, a trendy restaurant which offers a fresh and unpretentious approach to tapas classics and innovations alike. The problem is, its prices are so reasonable, and its flavourful offerings so delicious that the place is always packed. And cashing in on their popularity, the restaurant does pack you in into ridiculously tight spaces – generally four people will be crammed in around a corner table the size of a large computer monitor… there is barely room for your knees to squeeze under, let alone for the various tapas dishes to sit upon the table in unison. They also tend to rush you through the meal so that they can more swiftly eat into the lengthening queue which forms outside the restaurant each evening.

Spider crab and albondigas

Finding Lateral to be, predictably, pack out with queues stretching well into the buzzing Plaza de Santa Ana, we headed a few blocks down the road along the Calle del Prado, where we stumbled upon Va de Baco at 4 Calle del Prado 28013. The restaurant is seemingly quite new, decked out with chic lighting and cabinets brimming full of wine.  But the real star was the food. To start we were given a free aperitif which comprised a consommé style soup in which well-seasoned chickpeas bobbed gracefully, while on the side a super-creamy jamon croquette added some texture to the dish. Moving on to the tapas we ordered: simple, traditional favourites such as Ensaladilla Rusa (a mayonnaise-based potato salad with tuna a crunchy vegetables) and albondigas (meatballs) were served with contemporary twists such as the creamy curry sauce of the albondigas. More adventurous was a tapas of spider crab, delicately served with a potent wasabi mayonnaise, while the real star of the night was a ginger cream dessert with slices of mandarin and a passionfruit sorbet accompanying – exquisite. And best of all, the final bill, including a large carafe of Rioja plus two glasses extra at the end of the meal, was a mere €45 for the two of us.

Ginger cream

Bread stick...

On our second night in Madrid, we ditched the tapas trail for a hispanic-scandinavian fusion in the form of trendy new restaurant, Ølsen (15, Calle del Prado). The recently opened restaurant is already a firm favourite of the Madrid cool-crowd, with minimalist woods, low lighting and a chilled lounge soundtrack (I distinctly recognised Hotel Costes Volume 15 while we were dining) creating a very atmospheric dining ambience. As for the food, which for the most part pulls on Scandinavian influences, we were constantly thrilled by attention to detail and imaginative flavour fusions.

Sweet corn cakes with various fishy treats

To start we shared a fish sharing platter comprising sweet corn cakes and a selection of smoked salmon, smoked trout, caviar and a delicious taramasalata-styled smoked fish roe accompaniment. The combination of sweet, soft cakes and smokey fish was divine. On the side, bread was served in the form of various bagel-shaped creations, ranging from a sweeter glazed brioche to flat seeded cracker. For mains, we both chose a smoked lean brazed pork, with a red fruit and beer sauce and horseradish mashed potatoes. The meat was so tender and caramelised that along with the acidity of the red fruits and creaminess of the mashed potatoes, this dish took comfort to another level. A comfort which was then cranked up to a level of ridiculous self-indulgence when I had my dessert – a giant, soft and unctuous Oreo cookie with red fruits icecream. Oh god, I would return to Madrid just to have another one of those. Warmly recommended, if not stipulated as a necessary experience of the good life.

Giant Oreo!

But all this was just the start. Salamanca’s gastronomic offerings proved to be an altogether new level of culinary brilliance. Check out The Daily Norm tomorrow when I will try to put those incredible flavours into words!

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Apr 12

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Madeleine Melody

OK, so admittedly, the macaron attempt a few months back didn’t exactly go to plan, as my post “Macaron Madness” will testify. So I’ve turned to another Frenchie patisserie favourite which has turned out to be slightly easier to master. In fact, I’ve mastered quite a few French favourites of like, including Crème brûlée with a picture-perfect crackable burnt caramel top (courtesy of my new favourite kitchen toy – the mini blow torch) albeit that on my third attempt, the Crème brûlée somehow managed to revert into a kind of mousse brûlée (this being the one which was rather embarrassingly cooked for two French guests – I was full of bravado about English boy being able to cook French food to perfection and then that little mishap occurred… naturally I pretended it was a purposeful reinvention of the classic). And crossing over the Pyrenees to Catalonia, I’ve also recently mastered Crema Catalana, the lighter, citrus and subtly spiced version of the Crème brûlée, a dessert which previously had me stumped – it was either too runny or like jelly. Anyway, I digress, back to France…

I’ve been intending to cook madeleines for some time, ever since I picked up one of those shell-shaped baking moulds as an impulse purchase purely because it was made of silicone and is red (thus matching my kitchen colour scheme to perfection). Nonetheless, there my madeleine mould remained, creased up in my pots and pan cupboard in a way that only silicone could, until one day, a few weeks ago, when my ears customarily pricked up to the words “Paris” on my television screen and I found myself falling instantaneously in love with a new cookery programme: Rachel Khoo’s The Little Paris Kitchen. This programme is a must for any Paris lovers – it’s worth watching alone just for the stunning views of Montmartre roof tops, the Tour Eiffel by sunset, Paris viewed from the roof of the Grand Palais where they keep beehives (who would have known?!) as well as a quirky soundtrack featuring an ecclectic mix of old French classics from the likes of Charles Trenet as well as punchy tango chill from the Gotan Project. But by far the star of the show is the little teeny weeny kitchen which gives the show its title, as well as the equally tiny, affable and engaging proprietress of her little kitchen restaurant, Rachel Khoo. She aims to cook undaunting French classics, more often than not with a contemporary twist. She makes French cooking accessible and very unpretentious, which lets face it, makes a change, and she fills the hearts of us english with a certain pride – she is after all a London girl who has made it good in the closed culinary world of Paris.

Rachel Khoo

Anyway, it was Rachel Khoo who, in her first episode, made madeleines with a twist – she places a single raspberry in each madeleine before cooking and then, once hot out of the oven, pipes the raspberry’s little opening full of an oozy lemon curd. No wonder I was inspired to take out my funny red silicone tray and try this recipe out. The results were good (see photos below) – the madeleines, unlike those which you can buy cheap in Monoprix, are unctuous and moist, and this is no doubt helped by the the lemon curd and and raspberry, both of which combine to provide a delicious mid-Madeleine treat to break up an otherwise buttery flavour. Rachel Khoo, I salute you.

Pre-cooking - the madeleine mix in my silicone mould complete with raspberries, hole facing upwards

Et voilà, the finished madeleines

I told you I'm obsessed with Paris...

Rachel’s recipe for madeleines à la crème au citron can be found here.

Bon appetite!

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Apr 11

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My Easter Day Spanish Feast Spectacular

Easter day is over, but the Spring has only just begun, and now is as good a time as any to think succulent chicken, sweet wine imbued ice cream and cute little marzipans, just in case your summer beach body needed to endure any further damage! On Easter Sunday I followed my pro-Spanish theme of the previous week by cooking a Spanish feast of which Goya himself would have been proud. And it was so tasty, I feel compelled to share all the ideas with my faithful Daily Norm readers so that you too can go all España this Spring.

First however I should express my gratitude to Claudia Roden who, in her fantastic new book, The Food of Spain, gave me much of the inspiration for the feast.

The table

My table was all trussed up for Easter, with a spray of fresh chrysanthemums displayed alongside slender branches of pussy willow in a group of bottles, to contemporary effect. Amongst the flowers sat the must-have fluffy chicks of Easter, while at each person’s place, a damask-style napkin was topped with little paper hens.

To start…

I had to restrain myself from cooking a full-on starter because I knew that otherwise this Spring-like luncheon would become more akin to a Christmas day gorge-fest. Instead I provided some simple tapas, olives, nibbles and delicious mature manchego cheese from the land of Don Quixote, which I’ve discovered is best served sliced and drizzled with honey and sprinkled with thyme – a divine combination which would probably work well with similar hard sheep’s cheeses.

The chicken

The star of the dish was a roast chicken, but with added Spanish flavour. In a simple twist on the humble roast chicken, the chicken is at first basted in grape juice before being roasted, breasts down, for 45 minutes. Once flipped over, the breasts are again drizzled in grape juice. Meanwhile, the chicken cavity is stuffed with chunks of apple giving it a fruity aroma, while the dish is served with caramalised apples and grapes which can be either sautéd or oven cooked alongside the chicken. For the grape juice, you need to blend around 500g of grapes in a food processor and then press the pulp through a sieve to collect the juice. You should get around 250ml of juice. I was worried that the chicken, exposed as it was to the oven (I usually bake it partially wrapped in foil) would be dry, but with regular basting with the grape juices, the chicken was succulent and fruity, while the skin was ravishingly caramalised.

I served the chicken with some oven baked parsnips glazed in honey and wholegrain mustard and a generous portion of cute little Jersey Royal potatoes, straight from this year’s first harvest.

Dessert

Desserts don’t get much more Spanish than a brandy and walnut cake served with a raisin and sweet wine ice cream (helado de pasas y vino dulce). The cake on its own is fairly dry, so certainly benefits from the ice cream accompaniment. Following the Asturian recipe cited by Claudia Roden, I whisked 4 eggs and 200g caster sugar into a thick pale cream, adding 75g melted butter and 3 tablespoons of brandy into the mix. I then grinded up 500g of walnuts in the food processor which were folded into the cream mixture. It was poured into a greased spring-form cake tin and baked for around 45 minutes. The key to this recipe is the syrup which you then pour over the cake when it comes out of the oven. For this dissolve 100g sugar in 250ml water and simmer for around 5-10 minutes until syrupy. Then add a tablespoon of brandy for that alcoholic touch and pour it over the hot cake. Leave the cake for at least an hour to “drink” the syrup. The result is coarse but gooey, perfect with a raisin and wine ice cream – mine was made with a Spanish moscatel wine, but the syrupy sweet Malaga wine would be even better (let me know if you want the recipe – it’s a little to complex to set out here!)

Afternoon tea

What better way to end the day than with that Toledo favourite which I absolutely fell in love with in Spain than little marzipans. I couldn’t believe how easy they were to make! Simply take 200g ground almonds and 200g icing sugar and mix well. Then in a food processor add a few drops of almond extract (not too many or the flavour will overpower) and 2-3 tablespoons of water (you don’t need much as the almond oil makes the paste moist). And that’s it – once you have your paste, you can roll it into balls or make all sorts of imaginative shapes like I did. Once your creative side has been satiated, lay the creations on a baking tray and leave for around 12-24 hours. The marzipans will harden slightly on the outside and remain soft and moist on the inside. The best thing is that they will last for ages!

My Semana Santa nazareños

You can, by the way, glaze the marzipans for added luxor, but I tried this with Claudia Roden’s suggestion of whipped egg whites and icing sugar and it made my marzipans look as though they had been buried under a snow storm. Next time I’ll  stick to a simple egg-white glaze – and just 1-2 minutes under the grill.

¡Buen provecho!

Mar 21

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Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern – neon-spotted walk through a lady’s troubled mind

Tate Modern has gone all polka dot – and I’m not talking about the impending arrival of Damien Hirst. No, no, another artist, similarly best-selling and awfully contemporary, but perhaps less readymade, and stemming all the way from Japan claims that she made polka dots her artistic trademark long before Hirst made the colourful dots his personal emblem with LSD . And she’s probably right, because for Yayoi Kusama, the eccentric, self-admitted mental-institution resident and world famous artist who is the subject of Tate Modern’s latest retrospective exhibition, the polka dot was not just emblematic of her early and continuing artistic career, but represented the hallucinations looming inside her troubled head.

Welcome to Kusama world, a world where an artist’s output is not the product of imagination, but mental torture. Famous for her immersive installations, phallic representation, neon-bright colours and those all-embracing polka dots, Kusama is acutely successful in being able to welcome the viewer of her art into her slightly disturbed, turbulent world. This is, of course, aided by “immersive” installations, such as her work Aggregation: One thousand boats show, where the viewer becomes participant in the work as we are able to walk into a room covered floor to ceiling with the same repeated image of the phallus-filled boat before us. The effect is the same in I’m here but nothing, where an everyday sitting room is covered, all over, with neon polka dots, and, in the rather striking climax of the show, Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the brilliance of life, one walks through a room covered with mirrors and filled with a colour show of different LED filled lights – the effect is an infinity of light which is stunning for the senses. Nevertheless, it does feel more fairground than art gallery, as beautiful as it may be.

Yayoi Kusama, Aggregation: One thousand boats show (1953)

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room - Filled with the brilliance of life.

Yayoi Kusama, Self-Obliteration by Dots (detail), 1968, performance, documented with black-and-white photographs by Hal Reif.

Allegedly, all of this dottiness (both in mind and matter) began when Kusama was a young girl, when the image of a flower began to repeat itself before her eyes. Yayoi Kusama said about her 1954 painting titled Flower

One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle.

From this point onwards, Kusama started to cover everything with polka dots: walls, ceilings, floors, furniture, household objects, naked models, and herself, all representing the world as she sees it through repetitive and persistent hallucinations.

Even when the exhibits do not give you cause to “immerse” yourself within Kusama’s way of thinking, the art work on show betrays the extent of her troubled mind. Another installation of household objects, Accumulation sculptures, are presented bursting all over with an eruption of phallic protrusions. I found these works to be quite sickening – the textural surface of the resulting objects made me feel rather queasy, much like I would feel if I was looking at the surface of skin erupting with blisters. It was also possible to feel the magnitude of her repressive repetitiveness in her famous “infinity net” paintings – vast monotone canvases painted repeatedly with a single arc pattern, representing the loops of a net. These works are rather intrustive in their scale and claustrophobic in their illusion to an unrelenting and obsessive mental torture.

Yayoi Kusama, Accumulation sculptures (1950)

Yayoi Kusama, Flame (1992)

Personally my favourite works of the exhibition were probably her early paintings, in a variety of mediums from watercolour and gouache to charcoal and oils. Her 1949 work Lingering Dreams betrays the same sense of traumatic perturbation pervading all of her work, but is nonetheless beautifully painted – like an acutely depressed Van Gogh sunflower, the life and vitality strained and stretched out of it. I also rather enjoyed Kusama’s latest works, large multicoloured acrylic canvases, painted in a studio adjacent to her resident mental institution. The works appear to reflect a period of comparative contentment in Kasama’s latter career, although they continue to betray an element of obsessiveness and their bright colours are frequently harsh and discordant.

Yayoi Kusama, Lingering Dreams (1949)

I left Kusama’s show feeling a little tired. In immersing yourself into Kusama’s mind, you tread a mental journey which is not always comfortable, and often overly stimulating on all the senses. It did not impress upon me in the way that a greatly skilled figurative artist has the power to do. Instead it caused me to reflect upon the cognitive expressions of a high-wired eccentric lady. There is much reason to argue that some of this work, particularly the light installations, are not really art at all – but I’m not going to get into that today. For me, the greatest disappointment came upon entering the Tate shop and discovering no crazy polka dot embellished Louis Vuitton bags for sale – this was, after all, a Vuitton-sponsored exhibition. Having said this, my disappointment may not last long. As I write, I learn that Kusama and Vuitton are joining forces for a collection due out in Summer 2012… so it looks like the madness will continue, even into the finest echelons of Paris couture. Vive le polkadot!

Looking a bit like a snake surrounded by her creations... Yayoi Kusama in the installation Yellow Tree Furniture (2010). Photo : Y.Kusama Studio/Half Reiff

 

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Mar 12

Night at the Opera: The Death of Klinghoffer

I had a good week last week, managing to squeeze in two exhibitions, a ballet and opera. Well, it’s all a bit like London buses really – you wait for ages and none come along; then when one comes, three follow immediately behind. So it was that last Friday night, I rounded off the week with a chance visit to go to the Opera – I say chance because I stumbled across a very generous online deal which enabled me to get prize seats at the London Coliseum at a fraction of the proper price. It was therefore in two minds that I went along on Friday – on one hand it’s always great to see an opera, whatever that opera may be, but on the other hand, this mega online deal coupled with a decided lack of sell out status made me a little concerned that the show I was going to see wouldn’t even be worth the £25 I had paid. But there was no need for concern.

The opera was The Death of Klinghoffer, brought to us by the English National Opera, a performance which marks 21 years since the controversial opera was written by John Adams, but which has never before been performed in London, despite having originally received the backing of the likes of Glyndebourne opera. The reason for the reticence on the part of the UK’s opera companies to put on the opera is because of the controversy surrounding its depiction and narrative. The opera focuses on the fractious relationship between Israelites and Palestinians, with the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise liner by four members of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation as its linchpin. Such is the apparent controversy that protests were expected on opening night – and protests they had, albeit just one lone man with a small placard. The truth is, this opera, written by John Adams, isn’t really overly controversial. It’s more of a docu-opera, relaying the story of the cruise liner’s hijacking with its dramatic and fatal ending, and in doing this, it is like the most popular opera by Puccini or Wagner. In relaying the story of the hijacking, it attempts to explore, to some degree, the historical background behind the tensions in Israel. But both sides are given an opportunity to express their point of view, as a chorus of Palestinian exiles metamorphose seamlessly into a chorus of Jewish exiles, each singing about their respective grievances, the misery of being caught in a relentless religious and political territorial battle. To some extent, the Palestinian voice predominates, but then the hijackers were Palestinian, and therefore it is unsurprising that their story comes over stronger. Past criticism has been levelled at the opera’s humanising of the Palestinian terrorists. Nonetheless there is no reason why humanising the story of the terrorists should cause offence. Rather, it helps us, the onlooker, to better understand the motivations behind a terrorist in an age when terrorist atrocities are alive and kicking.

Rather than cause offence in its depiction of this contemporary struggle, the opera was informative as well as emotionally engaging. As a documentary, the opera was a real eye-opener into the Israeli crisis – while I have been constantly aware of the tensions throughout my life, I have never really sought to analyse, in any detail, the routes of the problem. While this opera undertook something of a superficial narrative of the background conflict (a scene from the original score which explored the history deeper had been cut out by the ENO’s production) it nevertheless focused the mind on the complexities of the historical fractions, the religious conflict and the political input which has incrementally shaped and augmented the tensions. As a tragic story, the opera was marvellously engaging. The most successful element was the score, masterfully composed with a continuous clash of emotional discordant chromatic melodies, whose pace and melodical form seemed to relentlessly crescendo rather than develop predictably towards a climax, leaving the audience sitting on the edge of their seats, perfectly resonating the feeling of interminable tension and terror which must have been felt by the passengers of the Achille Lauro when the liner was hijacked off the coast of Egypt.

Successful too was the use of the scenery to mirror the intensity of emotional pull, with versatile concrete panels being used at the backdrop to cruise-liner projections at one moment, and then, at the climax of the opera, closing in on one of the leads, Marilyn Klinghoffer (played by Michaela Martens) as she was told that her husband, Leon Klinghoffer (played by Alan Opie) had been killed by the terrorists, and his body (and wheelchair) dumped overboard. As the news of the murder begins to sink in, and the score reaches levels of of devastating chromatic intensity, the large concrete walls start to close in on Marilyn, decreasing the space around her as she desperately searches the barren concrete surfaces for an opening, a way out – a powerful metaphor for that moment of devastating tragedy, when you receive the worst possible news and seek any possible escape from this new, tragic reality.

But for me, the real star of the Opera was the chorus, playing both Palestinian and Jewish exiles. Countless singers harmonised together to deliver with spine tingling intensity, effectively projecting Palestinian discontent as the anguish of mourners develops into the blinded anger of militants, while amongst the Jewish exiles, a deep melancholy transforms gradually into hope as lost generations start to build a new future within Israel, as represented by the gradual addition of one olive tree after another across the stage. I was equally moved though by a scene in which the youngest of the terrorists, at merely 17, was recollecting an encounter with his mother, where, with chilling fervency, she told him that the only place for him was to enter Paradise through an act of jihad, thus prompting him to perform the murder after which the opera gains its name.

On the downside was the libretto, by Alice Goodman, often vague and very repetitive, and generally a little too slow. At one point, one of the terrorist was listing every bird he had ever seen – the melody he was singing suggested a dramatic speech which was central to his motivations as a hijacker. However the libretto seemed to belong to another story entirely. Goodman did however redeem herself through the dramatic declarations of the chorus, and through the highly resonant small-talk babble of the terrified passengers as they tried to take their mind off the terror all around them. While their words were practically meaningless, they added realism and tension to the scene, facilitating the narrative as a true reflection of this time of human terror.

There is no doubting the fact that this opera deals with sensitive issues which are perhaps even more alive today, post 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7, than they were when the work was first written. But it is refreshing to see a new opera which successfully utilises the perfectly versatile, inherently dramatic medium of opera to narrate a story of contemporary relevance. Seeing the same old Mozart or Puccini is all very well, but what lessons can really be learnt from these tales for the modern day?

Mar 6

Night at the Royal Ballet: The Dream/ Song of the Earth

When I was invited to spend the evening at London’s Royal Opera House to see a double-bill Royal Ballet performance of The Dream and Song of the Earth, I was more excited by the prospect of enjoying the sumptuous surroundings of the Royal Opera House (which, owing to hefty prices, I rarely get to enjoy) rather than the ballet itself. I’ve always considered myself more of an opera man dismissing the love of ballet as being confined to those fanatics with a familiarity of and appreciation for the technical aspects of dance. Last night I found the Royal Opera House to be as stunning as anticipated. From the startlingly modern, elegantly dazzling Paul Hamlyn Hall, where champagne takes centre stage, and the glass and iron structure is like a diamond preserved from the Victorian era, to the sumptuous surroundings of the plush red and gold auditorium: this theatre is without a doubt the jewel in London’s crown. But for me, the real stunner of the evening was, to my surprise, but quite appropriately, the preserve of the performance on stage.

The stunning Paul Hamlyn ("floral") hall interior

The Dream

In their performance of The Dream, set to the well known music of Mendelssohn (the wedding march now being played out all over the world as a newly married couple descend magnificently down the church aisle) the Royal Ballet provided a whimsical, tight and aesthetically joyous production, a cornucopia of visual delights, and a perfectly danced narrative of Shakespeare’s renowned Midsummer Night’s Dream tale. But in Song of the Earth, the Royal Ballet did not just present a ballet performance, but an indubitable work of art, a stunning rendering of moving sculpture, a work of poetry told through the human form. It was mesmerising, haunting and moving all in one. I left the ballet a changed man.

Oberon and Puck - The Dream

So why was it so good? Well I am a quite the philistine when it comes to the technical adroitness of a ballet dancer, but it was immediately obvious from both performances that the Royal Ballet does not cut corners when it comes to quality. In their performance of The Dream, the ballerinas danced with such poise and light delicacy that the distinction between dream and reality blurred as a stage full of flitting fairies appeared to come to life. This was no doubt enhanced by the beautiful and complex scenery coupled with low misty lighting which perfectly epitomised the fairytale grotto of childhood imaginings. This performance was definitely the more traditional of the two, but it did not lack allure because of it. Rather, the charm of the corps de ballet, identically dressed in diaphanous luminescent little tutus, tinged with forest shades of greens and turquoise, was like the coming to life of a Degas pastel. The romance of the ballet was thereafter confirmed, as I imagined myself as something of a Degas, ready to leap up into the wings and paint the dancers at work.

Edgar Degas, Blue Dancers (1893)

But in Song of the Earth, greater forces combined to conjure a startling production of mesmeric power. Here the music, the lighting, the stark scenery, the stripped down costumes and the athletic skill of the dancers all joined forces to create an awe-inspiring tour de force of emotional exploration. Song of the Earth is a ballet choreographed by the ballet supremo Kenneth Macmillan (1929-92). It is set to the haunting, often chromatic and deeply stirring score by Mahler. His 1908 composition (“Das Lied von der Erde”), was itself based upon six ancient chinese poems which had been translated into German the previous year by Hans Bethge. The poems, which dealt with themes of living, parting and salvation touched Mahler deeply at a time when he was embroiled in his own personal melancholy, having lost one of his children to scarlet fever and diphtheria and being himself close to death with a significant heart defect. The significant emotional journey along which Mahler was relentlessly embarking during this time bleeds through, in every tender and painful detail, into the score. In the Royal Ballet’s performance, the songs are intermittently sung by a tenor and contralto. When combined with dance, the result is magical.

Song of the Earth (© Tristram Kenton for the Guardian)

“The wine already beckons in the golden goblet
but do not drink yet – first I will sing you
a song.
With a burst of laughter the song of sorrow 
shall sound into your soul.
When sorrow draws near, the gardens of the
soul lie waste,
Joy and singing wither and die.
Life and death alike are dark.”

I: The Drinking Song of Earth’s Misery

Song of the Earth

The dance perfectly reflected the themes of anguish, life, death and salvation intermittently explored by the singers and the score. The contemporary choreography was so artistically executed, it took my breath away, and words are not sufficient to describe the effect produced. Nonetheless, as I attempt to consider and put words to my emotional response, I am particularly struck by the staging – a stark bare stage, with the dancers lit from above and behind. This resulted in shadows forming on the front of the dancers’ bodies, so that every muscle and angle of their beautifully choreographed and moving forms could be appreciated with an enhanced focus. Also, the monochrome tones and use of identical costumes amongst male and female dancers respectively meant that the personality was taken out of the dancers, and the focus placed in the use of their bodies, and the shapes of their dance in narrating the emotions portrayed. Thus at times the dancers appeared to form the shape of temples, flowers, swinging pendulums and of twisting anguished souls, entangled in chains around each other as the dancers desperately sought to escape their inexorable link with death.

Carlos Acosta as the Messenger of Death (© ROH, Bill Cooper)

By contrast, the brooding masked persona of the characterised messenger of death, stunningly portrayed last night by Ballet favourite, Carlos Acosta, was omnipresent across the performance, a sinister undertone whose looming role in the tale was forebodingly clear. Particularly impressive also was the lead female ballerina Marianela Nuñes, exhibiting an almost superhuman control of her elegant form, specially when, during one movement, she danced en point backwards across the stage for what must have been almost a minute uninterrupted. The skill of dancing on show was staggering.

Ballet is one of those things you just have to see in action, alive and throbbing on the stage. Even Degas’ paintings can’t replicate the power and emotional draw of a real performance, and televised performances also lack the intensity of a live show. Now I have seen the real thing, I am a man converted.

Monochrome colours and simple costumes to stunning effect: Song of the Earth

Postscript: Thanks go to my friend Siobhan, who took asked me along to the ballet last night, and particular congratulations go to Francesca Hayward, dancer of the Royal Ballet and member of the corps de ballet in last night’s performance of The Dream – it’s incredible to see a young face from my childhood up on the Royal Ballet stage having achieved so much as such an accomplished young dancer. I envisage a great future ahead for you.

Mar 5

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Daily Norm Book Club: The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño

“The water rose up the stairs from the beach and spilled over the sidewalk. Consider your next play very carefully, warned El Quemado, and he began to splash away toward the Del Mar…The water was black and now it came up to my ankles. A kind of paralysis so thoroughly prevented me from moving my arms and legs that I couldn’t rearrange my counters on the map…The die, white as the moon, sat with the 1 faceup. I could move my neck and I could talk (or at least whisper) but that was all. Soon the water swept the board off the wall, and it began to float away from me, along with the force pool and the counters. Where would they go? Toward the hotel or the old town? Would someone find them someday? And if they did, would they be able to see that it was a map of the battles of Third Reich, and that the counters were Third Reich armoured corps and infantry corps, the air force, the navy?…

Calmly, and with no hope of saving myself, I waited for the instant when the water would cover me. Then, emerging from under the streetlights, came El Quemado’s pedal boats. Falling into a wedge-shaped formation (one pedal boat at the head, six two-by-two behind, and three bringing up the rear), they glided noiselessly along, synchronised and gallant in their way, as if the flood were the perfect moment for a military parade. They took turn after turn around what had once been the beach, with my dumbstruck gaze fixed on them; if anyone was pedaling and steering, it must have been ghosts, because I couldn’t see a soul. Finally they moved out to sea, though not far, and changed formation…From my position all I could see was the nose of the first one, so perfect was their new alighnment. Suspecting nothing, I watched the blades cleave the water and the boats begin to move again. They were coming straight for me! Not very fast, but as relentlessly and ponderously as the old dreadnoughts of Jutland. Just before the floater of the first one, surely followed by the remaining nine, was about to smash into my head, I woke up.”

The Third Reich, Roberto Balaño (Picador, 2011) © heirs of Roberto Bolaño

The lastest posthumous publication from author Roberto Bolaño is a profoundly disturbing novel. Not because the novel is full of back-to-back gruesome descriptions of serial murder (as in Bolaño’s most celebrated offering, 2666) but because there is something intrinsically unsettling about the narrative, told from the point of view of a young 25 year old German tourist, Udo Berger, who appears to descend into some form of intellectually advanced emotional breakdown as the book goes on: From a lucid beginning, Udo, as narrator, spends more and more time preoccupied by the realms of his nightmares, while in the real world, his descriptions of the places and people around him become gradually more sinister and surreal.

The story starts relatively normally. Udo Berger, an aspiring writer and part-time gamer from Stuttgart, and his girlfriend Ingeborg, are on holiday in a typical tourist-pot resort on Spain’s Costa Brava. It isn’t clear when the book is set, but a reference to a split-Germany and the reliance on landline telephone communication (rather than mobiles or email) suggests that the story is probably 1980s at the latest.

Udo Berger is a war-games champion back in Germany, and consequently spends much of his time immersed in the slightly niche world of war gaming, both playing, and writing related articles which he publishes around the world. The game with which he is primarily preoccupied, and the one which gives the name to the novel, is Third Reich. The game, which is a real game released in 1974 by gamers Avalon Hill under the full title, Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, is a grand strategy wargame covering the European theatre of World War II in Europe. It’s a long running game (not your average Monopoly) which requires the players to take on the roles of the various major national powers at play in the war. The players then simulate the entire war effort from 1939 until it’s end, but with the opportunity to re-strategise the course of history and investigate different courses of military manoeuvre which may not have been undertaken in reality (for example a German invasion of Spain).

It is against the rather fractious setting of war that the story of a holiday in peace-time Spain plays out. Udo spends much of his time cooped up inside his hotel room strategising war, while his girlfriend attempts to enjoy normal holiday past times. It is on one such occasion that she meets another holidaying couple, Charly and Hanna, and a group of shady locals who introduce both Ingeborg and Udo to the darker side of town life beyond the tourist sheen. The new-found friendship between the couples does not end well, when Charly, after various tumultuous encounters, disappears without a trace. As the holiday comes to an end and Ingeborg decides to return to Germany, Udo is intent on remaining behind in Spain to make sense of Charly’s disappearance.

It is at this point that the heart of the novel begins to play out, and various factors combine to affect a mood of disintegration and melancholy in the mind and surroundings of Udo. As the hotel gradually empties, the once bustling resort takes on a ghostly feel. Udo describes noises in the corridor and mirrors without reflection as his mind becomes more and more troubled with nightmares. In the meantime he strikes up a gaming relationship with El Quemado – a severely disfigured and enigmatic local who runs a boat pedalling business by day, and sleeps in a fortress built from his boats at night. Once introduced to the rules of Third Reich, El Quemado becomes progressively more zealous in his role of allied strategist, until it becomes clear that his enthusiasm to play against a German is laced with more sinister undertones. Despite becoming aware of this risk, and long after the mystery of Charly’s disappearance is clear up, Udo Berger feels compelled to remain in Spain and play on, despite the seriousness of the potential consequences once the game of war is ended.

Scene from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal

This is a story which is unsettling perhaps because of the many ironies it entails. Udo Berger is on holiday in peace-time Spain, but remains cooped up inside reliving the history which dogs his nation. He is adamant that he is no Nazi, yet he is obsessive in wanting to re-stage the second world war in order to improve its outcome. Meanwhile the core of the story plays out when the tourist season is over, when the hotel is tired, dilapidated and empty, ready to hibernate for the winter, when it’s owner is dying and its staff are rebelling, and when, instead of sun, the sandy beach is pitted with the patter of rainfall. The story is also unsettling because our access to it is through Udo Berger, a man who makes for an unreliable narrator, forever wavering between nightmare and reality, historical strategy and contemporary indecision. Yet this is what makes the book so edgy, electric and captivating.

This book reminds me of Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 cinematic masterpiece, The Seventh Seal, particularly the scene when the protagonist, Antonio Block, plays a game of chess on the beach against Death. Enigmatic, eery, sinister yet compelling. It also reminds me of the surreal and slightly unsettling works of Rene Magritte – on the surface, he presents recognisable everyday situations, yet at their core, they unbalance and disconcert. Bolaño’s newly published novel is another such gothially-surreal success, which presents a further opportunity to discover the comprehensive and multifaceted oeuvre of Roberto Bolaño, much of which remained unpublished on his death in 2003. I urge anyone with a taste for the unusual to read this novel.

Mar 2

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Lucian Freud Portraits

Roll up roll up for the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad. All the big wigs of the Brit-art A-list are in town, the banners are up, and the art posters line the saturated platforms of the underground as the PR machine goes into overdrive. As if in response to the cattle cry, the crowds have come to town –  the galleries are packed, the gallery restaurants have waiting times of over an hour, and the gallery shops are partitioned by huge queues of customers cashing in on memorabilia of these big-billed art shows. It’s all really quite stressful.

Next in line to meet my sampling eye was the Lucian Freud portraits retrospective at London’s National Portrait Gallery. Having been in the pipeline for some time, and organised in collaboration with the artist himself, the NPG’s exhibition gained additional poignance when, last July, Lucian Freud died at the ripe old age of 88. He did so working right up until the end, and his unfinished portrait of his studio assistant and dog hangs at the climax of the show.

Portrait of the Hound (2011)

There is no doubting Freud’s stature as a preeminent star of British art. When his painting, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, sold at Christie’s in New York for the sum of US$33.6million in 2008, it broke the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist. It is consequently appropriate that he should be lined up along with the likes of David Hockney and Damien Hirst for blockbuster solo exhibitions which promise to showcase British art to the world. It is also appropriate that the show focuses on his portraits, for Lucian Freud is long associated with his unforgiving nudes, painted with a multi-layered impasto application of fleshy pale paint, striking often uncomfortable and usually unflattering poses, and portraying a deeply penetrated psychological profile cast free from boundaries, clutter or clothing for full and frank disclosure to the world.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995)

Leigh Bowery (Seated) (1990)

In this show, the NPG give us plenty of raw unabashed flesh to stare at, as Freud’s emboldened, unrepentant portraits confront the audience rather than seduce. In the galleries, there was an almost tangible electricity in the air, as the scale of the show and the sheer number of these awkwardly posed nudes threw light on the often disconcerting relationships between artist and model, the somewhat fragmented and awkward relationship between artist and children, and the range of dynamic but often slightly disturbing characters on show.

Sunny Morning - Eight Legs (1997)

The paintings are never going to be easy to look at, not least because these are not ideological nudes. This is not like looking at the beautifully blended, perfectly shaped backside of the Rokeby Venus (by Velazquez) and appreciating the aesthetics of the scene. These portraits depict ordinary people, with very ordinary bodies in no holds barred portrayal, pubic hair out, penises dangling, sagging flesh. It would be like walking along the street and seeing everyone naked, their legs parted awkwardly, their private parts on full view. It’s not easy to look at, but these portraits are undoubtedly fascinating to view, just because they are ordinary people – people who have bared all to the artist and, through him, to the world.

Girl with a Kitten (1947)

Nonetheless, emblematically Freudian impasto flesh asides, my favourite paintings were those from the beginning of Freud’s career. In this delightfully chronologically curated show, the first few galleries, while packed, showed Freud’s fastidiously executed, perfectly drafted early portraits, when he used very fine brushes and paid close attention to every detail. Thus in the portraits of his first wife, Kitty Garman, you can see every hair on her head, and in the portrait of her wearing a yellow gown (with boob unceremoniously flopping out), each fibre of that gown’s toweling texture is painted. As Freud’s portraits grew less detailed and Freud’s preference was for thicker sable brushes, he still paid close attention to a number of background factors in his work. In Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (1968) for example, the leaves of the plant are painted with excruciating detail – every millimeter of the plant, from its shiny leaves and rough edges, to the dying leaves and dried up ends, are perfectly represented by Freud. His early paintings have lost none of their intensity in being scrupulously painted – the sitters look tense, and the widened eyes, typical of Freud’s portraits at that time, are full of emotional anxiety and unguarded vulnerability. From the very beginning, Freud had an exceptional talent for painting simple portraits loaded with dramatic tension and emotional complexity.

Girl with a White Dog (1950-51)

Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (Self-Portrait) (1967-8)

As the show goes on, the works become more ambitious and the nakedness more frequent. This is all very well, but what upset me was not the nudity, but the increased coarseness of Freud’s finish. From his Benefits Supervisor onwards, the texture of his paint finish becomes more and more lumpy which really made my stomach turn. In his 2007 portrait, Ria, Naked Portrait, the face of Ria appears disfigured by a mass of lumpy built up textured paint on her face, which looks more like the affliction of some terrible skin disease. The effect is the same in his final, unfinished painting, Portrait of the Hound (above) where the face of his studio assistant appears contaminated by the same warty contagion. It’s an unpleasant finish which rather repulsed me as I walked away from this show.

Ria, Naked Portrait (2006-7)

Still, this messy end did nothing to dissuade me of the overall merits of this show, and the superb skill which Freud demonstrated throughout his career. Through his paintings, he has created self-contained independent souls who appear to jump from the canvas and steal the attention of the viewer. In this way, Freud leaves behind a multifaceted legacy which will live on wherever his portraits hang. In the meantime, this opportunity to see so many hung together is truly a must-see, and so much more fulfilling than 5 million purple trees lauded down the road in Piccadilly.

Painter and Model (1986-7)

All images above are the copyright of Lucian Freud.

Feb 23

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Amsterdam Part IV: The Hotel and the Restaurants

Fresh flowers and chandeliers in the Hotel Estheréa

I’m back from Amsterdam and pretty fed up about it. I find myself crossing the road looking out obsessively for cyclists and finding none. Here, the now familiar bong of the tram bell has been replaced by sirens, and these light filled transport carriages are superseded by the claustrophobic moving coffins of the London Underground. I look at buildings, thinking that something is wrong – then I realise that beneath them there is no reflection. But it’s always been my firm belief that part of the success of a holiday is how well you remember it. Consequently I have set about looking through and editing my prodigious collection of photographs, sorting through the postcards I buy obsessively whenever I go on holiday (with no intention to ever write, or send any) and recollecting the food experiences which filled by Amsterdamian days. With this in mind, I write today in an attempt to share my experience of the restaurants, and more importantly my accommodation while in Amsterdam.  As I’ve said before, in this time of the vindictive TripAdvisor professional complainant, where countless businesses in the hospitality industry are closing down because of picky, negative reviews posted online like school yard insults, I think it is only appropriate that a good experience is also applauded online, and shared so that fellow jetsetters can head off to a recommended restaurant or hotel, emboldened by some honest advice to temper their expectations.

Exterior of the Hotel Estheréa

The hotel – Hotel Estheréa **** – Singel 303-9, Amsterdam

I could use almost every superlative in the thesaurus to describe the Hotel Estheréa and still not do it justice. This hotel, a child of the boutqiue revolution, but also the mother of all opulent sophistication, was a faultessly exquisite base for our Amsterdam stay. The reason, ultimately, for the success of this hotel is attention to detail. In the bedroom, two bottles of water would be provided free to guests everyday – a small thing, but often something which you really feel the need of at the end of a heavy evening and have to revert to what ever dodgyness flows from the tap. In the foyer, tea and coffee is provided all day, a huge range of teas being on offer, and complimentary cakes, biscuits, sweets and multivarious nibbles in retro glass jars. In the various reception rooms, the interior design is stunningly executed with an emphaisis on rejuvinated Victorian elegance – richly patterened wallpapers, huge low hanging chandeliers, various species of taxdermy under closhes and in frames, large damask covered arm chairs, a book-lined library and an array of fresh flowers embuing the air with their fragrance, single stems in collected ecclectic vases and huge bouquets greeting guests in the reception.

Our bedroom at the Hotel Estheréa

Head for the gold and glass lift to the rooms upstairs and you will find a range of bedrooms decorated in an impressive range of different schemes. Ours was a luxuriously drapped room in the roof – spacious, lined with a lavish chinese themed wallpaper of blues and gold, a sinfully comfortable bed loaded with embroidered cushions and a throw shot with blue and gold silk, and a stunning view looking over the Singel canal – one of the principal canals lined with the grand townhouses of former traders and merchants. Admittedly not all rooms benefit from a canal view, and you do have to pay more for the privilege. But I think it’s well worth it – and the premium is not much for the pleasure it provides. Finally the breakfast, while not cheap (18 euros per person) is the perfect set-me-up for the day, including champagne, cooked and continental selections and, best of all, various little pastries and cakes which look like they walked straight out of a Parisian patisserie. Finally I should mention location – it’s perfect, pretty much equidistant from all the main points of interest, so that Anne Frank’s house, the central station, the rosy red lights and the museum district are all within walking distance (though you need stamina – but there’s always that complimentary hotel tea to sustain you when the walking gets to much).

Main foyer in the Hotel Estheréa

Breakfast at the Hotel Estheréa

Lavish design at the Hotel Estheréa

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Feb 2

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Cappuccino: No longer just froth and espresso

Cappuccino is no longer just a coffee. The café chain which brands itself after the popular italian coffee has rewritten the meaning of this favoured frothy drink. For in Cappuccino Grand Café, the cappuccinos are just the tip of the iceberg. The café group, which is now a predominant restaurant brand across the island of Mallorca, with branches also in Marbella and Valencia, as well as a handful in Jeddah and Beirut, is the ultimate in café chic. It’s exudes sophistication from every bubble of its creamy coffee froth. Its waiters are dressed to impress – with bow ties and black armbands, they are like butlers from a bygone era. Everyone is beautiful, from the staff to the customers who almost become more glamorous upon entering as they allow a wash of Cappuccino couture to penetrate and tantalise all over, as almond latte replaces a standard coffee, and cocktails and wine bubbles aplenty become the new still or sparkling. In the background, a carefully selected soundtrack resonates, wafting the space with Buddah-barish chill and soulfulness, while earlier coffee stops are accompanied by the timeless polyphony of jazz. And to top it off, Cappuccino has managed, almost across the board, to secure itself the very best of restaurant locations, so that in Marbella and Mallorca, you can savour a tranquil seaside view, while in Palma de Mallorca, locations in luxurious former palaces have been made the norm (as opposed to the Norm – let us not confuse the two).

Norms at the Cappuccino Grand Cafe in Marbella (pen on paper 2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)

So why am I going on an all out campaign to promote this amazing café chain? Well it’s certainly not because they are paying me in free almond lattes (if only – although if the CEO of el Grupo Cappuccino happens to be reading this, please feel free to oblige). Rather, Cappuccino fully deserves its place in my search of all things indulgent and beautiful, because as a place to go for lunch, coffee, drinks or dinner, it is sophisticated, beautiful and ultimately satisfying.

Cappuccino first came to my attention last summer when a new branch opened in Marbella. Situated bang on the paseo maritimo next to the Mediterranean, in a quiet and very exclusive spot (Lord Sugar lives close by, as do those lucky few frequenting the opulent Marbella Club Hotel and other establishments on the Golden Mile), it benefits from superb views and is sheltered from any adverse weather conditions by a canopy of mushroomed pine trees and lush garden surrounds which lead up to the nearest luxury hotel stood behind it. When I went there for the first time, having stumbled upon it during a long walk out of Marbella’s centre, I fell in love. The music, the sunset, the staff and the food which, compared to many Marbella restaurants is very reasonably priced, were spellbinding. There I felt like a pop star, indulged, relaxed, contented.

Cappuccino, Marbella

Cappuccino's smooth almond latte

By coincidence, I had a trip booked to Mallorca a few weeks later and there, since it is the island from where the chain originally springs, Cappuccino has marked its claim to various scenic spots all over the island. Such was the beauty of their location that we spent nearly every day indulging in at least one meal in a Cappuccino – for example on the port front of the stunning natural harbour of Port d’Andratx, or in a central square in the charming medieval town of Valldemossa, just round the corner from the Monastery which laid host to one Chopin and his lover. In Palma de Mallorca, there are four Cappuccinos and a number of take away branches and, mercifully, barely a Starbucks in sight (I say barely as there blatantly is a Starbucks somewhere but I have become conversant in the habit of shunning them in cultural locations). These are perhaps some of the most opulent Cappuccinos, set in former palaces with quaint patio gardens and candlelit tables set amongst vast baroque colonnades. On Palma’s vast paseo maritimo, you can sup on the luxurious almond latte in full view of the gothic cathedral, while on Palma’s answer to Bond Street – the Passeig Borne – you can people watch to your heart’s content.

CD Volume 5 of Cappuccino's own sensational soundtrack

And what to do to savour Cappuccino’s magic once you get home? Well the atmospheric soundtrack playing in every café is happily available to purchase – I have all five volumes of the Cappuccino CDs and play them on an almost continuous repeat. The first four make for marvellous coffee music – tinkling jazz and re-imaginings of popular melodies – while the fifth volume is the ultimate in Mediterranean chill.

I shall rapture no further, but leave you instead with a selection of snaps I have taken at the various Cappuccinos in Marbella and Mallorca. In the meantime, Cappuccinos website can be found here, including details of all the CDs.

Vive le Cappuccino!

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2005-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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