Fauré Song Gala review – subtlety and sensitivity mark centenary of composer’s death

Wigmore Hall, London
Soprano Véronique Gens, mezzo Fleur Barron, tenor Laurence Kilsby and baritone Stéphane Degout came together to cover almost half of Fauré’s entire song output

Of all this year’s significant musical anniversaries, it’s the centenary of the death of Gabriel Fauré that most obviously offers scope for a Wigmore Hall tribute. Either Fauré’s piano works or his chamber music could have served as the starting points for such an event, and there will be a weekend devoted to the chamber works later in the autumn. But it was the mélodies that featured in this opening gala, 48 of them, almost half of Fauré’s entire song output.

Soprano Véronique Gens, mezzo Fleur Barron, tenor Laurence Kilsby and baritone Stéphane Degout were the soloists for this special occasion, with pianistic responsibilities shared between Susan Manoff and Julius Drake. They presented the songs in more or less chronological order, beginning with Fauré’s first setting, of Victor Hugo’s Le Papillon et la Fleur, which dates from 1861, when he was 16 and beginning to study with Saint-Saëns, and ending with his last song cycle, L’Horizon Chimérique, composed in 1921. Degout had those four songs to himself, wrapping his honeyed tone around every phrase, but elsewhere the sequence was shared out more democratically, so that all four singers contributed to a performance of Fauré’s best known cycle, La Bonne Chanson, on poems by Paul Verlaine. Continue reading...


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The Guardian view on tackling FGM: as progress slows, efforts must be redoubled | Editorial

Survivors and other campaigners have done admirable work, but efforts to eradicate the practice by the end of the decade are way off target

Each day, 12,000 girls are at risk of female genital mutilation, the UN says – subjecting them not only to immediate pain and violation of their rights, but to lifelong health complications and trauma. UN experts led by the special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, described it this spring as “one of the most pernicious forms of violence” committed against them.

The UN set a target of eradicating FGM by the end of this decade, and impressive advances have been made in some countries. But overall, progress has stalled or reversed. In 2016, 200 million girls and women worldwide had undergone FGM. Since then, 30 million more women have endured it. Most FGM cases – 144 million – have happened in Africa, with a reported 80 million in Asia and 6 million in the Middle East. The rate of decrease has been slower than population growth in communities where the practice persists, and Unicef says that girls are also being cut at a younger age, reducing the opportunities to intervene. Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/15/the-guardian-view-on-tackling-fgm-as-progress-slows-efforts-must-be-redoubled?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger

Overcoming porn addiction requires time and effort, but the reward is a better sex life | Ahona Guha

Rewiring your sexual patterns can help you ‘surf the urge’ and reconnect with your partner

* The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work




While there’s often a general conception that the world is hypersexual and everyone is having lots of sex, the reality is quite different. Some international studies have found that rates of sexual activity are dropping overall. One of the reasons suggested to explain this decrease has been reliance on pornography and internet-based unpartnered sexual exploration instead of partnered activity.

Ben* came to therapy because of difficulties in his relationship with his girlfriend. He was 25 and his girlfriend was his first partner. They’d been together for a year and had just moved in together into a sharehouse. Ben said they were struggling to communicate about sex and had found it difficult to agree on sexual frequency. He admitted with some sheepishness that his girlfriend wanted sex more often than he did; he said he would be happy with sex once every two weeks. Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/16/overcoming-porn-addiction-requires-time-and-effort-but-the-reward-is-a-better-sex-life?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger

‘My whole life’s interconnected’: Neneh Cherry on the relationships that inspire her, leaving home at 15, and the joy of a trashy box set

As her highly anticipated memoir is published, the celebrated musician and all-round creative powerhouse answers questions from Observer readers and famous fans including Michael Stipe, Bernardine Evaristo, Questlove and Sadiq Khan

Neneh Cherry, singer, writer, is sipping tea and talking about a party back in the day. “I keep thinking about it,” she says. “It was the first party I brought Naima to. I was 18, Naima was a baby, so it was in the early 80s. The party was at Jeannette Lee’s house. We had a white sling for Naima, and we were at the party, and Gareth Sager was going out with Jeannette. Anyway, Jeannette said: ‘Oh, can I take Naima in the sling?’ I was like: ‘God, yes, great. I can let my hair down for a minute.’ And there was a piano there, and Mark Springer was playing the piano, and Naima was fine, she was sleeping. We were all there. Together. I’ve been thinking about it maybe because Tyson, my daughter, has had a child, and she just took her to a festival, We Out Here… Anyway, that party, I feel like things came from there. That centre. When other things happened, different successes, that was always there first.”

What Cherry is talking about is family. Family through blood, family through friendship, family through music. A quick recap of the characters mentioned reveals the connections: Lee was in Public Image Ltd and now co-owns Rough Trade Records; Sager was in Rip Rig + Panic with Cherry, as was Springer. Naima and Tyson (and Cherry’s other daughter, Mabel) are musicians and singers. And Cherry’s wonderful new memoir, A Thousand Threads, is a personal history that has such connections woven all the way through. If you were to draw Cherry’s family tree, it would be a complicated picture, and, for her, would include long-term friends so close that they are a part of her clan. Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/sep/15/neneh-cherry-a-thousand-threads-memoir-interview-readers-mabel?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger

The Siege by Ben Macintyre review – enthralling account of the Iranian embassy hostage crisis

In the most gripping study to date of the real-life 1980 drama, the bestselling author of A Spy Among Friends unravels the complexity of an event that saw the SAS gatecrash live TV and made Mrs Thatcher a national heroine

For those of us of a certain age (62, since you ask), the extraordinary events of 5 May 1980 will remain indelibly etched on our memories. No, I’m not talking about the final of the Embassy World Snooker Championship, but the SAS’s storming of the Iranian embassy in London that suddenly interrupted the BBC’s coverage of that battle in Sheffield.

Few people had heard of the SAS (Special Air Service) before they explosively ended the six-day siege by six gunmen who had taken captive 26 hostages, including four Britons. But on that bank holiday evening on live TV a transfixed nation watched these mysterious figures dressed in black and wearing balaclavas smash their way into the embassy in Princes Gate. Continue reading...


https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/15/the-siege-by-ben-macintyre-review-enthralling-account-of-the-iranian-embassy-hostage-crisis-sas-hostage-drama?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger