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    Roger Norrington, Iconoclastic British Conductor, Dies at 91

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    His work, largely unknown outside Britain until late in his career, was often based on historical treatises. It was seen by many as refreshingly innovative.Roger Norrington, the English conductor who became a star of the historically informed performance movement by provocatively applying scholarly research about tempos and tone production to a broad expanse of the symphonic repertoire, from Beethoven to Mahler and even the modernist Stravinsky, died on Friday at his home outside of Exeter, England. He was 91.His death was confirmed by his friend and musical colleague Evans Mirageas, who is the artistic director of the Cincinnati Opera.Mr. Norrington was known for his brisk, lively and often audacious performances of Handel, Mozart and Haydn before he turned his attention to Beethoven and Berlioz; after that, he forged deeper into the 19th and early 20th centuries. He led both period-instrument and modern orchestras, using the same interpretive principles, and though some of his performances drew criticism for their brash iconoclasm, many listeners regarded them as insightful and refreshingly original.Lanky, bespectacled, bearded and balding, Mr. Norrington projected both affability and authority, and he loved making the case for his ideas — not only in interviews but also in seemingly off-the-cuff comments at his concerts. He often cited centuries-old treatises as well as his delight in the “pure” sound, as he put it, of strings playing without vibrato. He once famously referred to vibrato as “a modern drug.”Toward the end of his career, he preferred to conduct while seated, usually on a high swivel chair that allowed him to turn to the audience to smile conspiratorially at a light moment within the music, and even to encourage applause. He was known to tell audiences that they could applaud between the movements of a symphony or a concerto, a common practice in the 18th and 19th centuries that is frowned on today.He reveled in being provocative. In a 2021 interview with The Telegraph, he referred to his 2007 recording of Mahler’s Second Symphony as his “last hand grenade.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Only 5 Fingers Playing Piano, but the Sound of So Many Hands

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      When Nicholas McCarthy was 15, he telephoned a local music school to ask about taking piano lessons and mentioned that he was disabled, having been born without a right hand.The school principal didn’t take the news well. “How will you even play scales?” McCarthy recalled her saying, dismissively, before hanging up.Now, some 20 years later, McCarthy is set to prove anyone who doubted him wrong — and in a high-profile way. On Sunday at the Royal Albert Hall in London, McCarthy is the star name for a concert at the Proms, Britain’s most prominent classical music series.In front of thousands of spectators in the hall, as well a live TV audience, McCarthy, 36, will perform Maurice Ravel’s bravura Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, using the grand piano’s sustain pedal to elongate the bass notes while his hand leaps around the keyboard.“Ravel’s really created an aural illusion,” McCarthy said. “Everyone might be thinking, ‘Bloody hell, I’m only seeing five fingers playing, but I’m hearing so many hands.’”Nicholas McCarthy will perform Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Sunday.Hayley Benoit for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      All Aboard a Steam Train to See ‘The Railway Children’

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      The steam train departed the station with a gentle chug, belching clouds of steam that streamed past the carriage windows. Gathering speed, the locomotive transported its passengers through a damp green valley, past gray stone buildings, rain-dripping oak trees, banks of ferns and hillsides dotted with sheep.For many visitors to the Keighley and Worth Valley heritage railway, the picturesque five-mile route through northern England from the town Keighley to Oxenhope village is the main attraction. But for the passengers on Tuesday, it was just the beginning.A theater adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s classic children’s book, “The Railway Children,” awaited them when they stepped down from the train in Oxenhope. To take their seats, passengers headed into a large engine room shed next to the platform, where they sat on either side of a railway track. The scenes played out on a movable set that shunted up and down the tracks. And at certain key moments in the play, a second real steam train rolled in as part of the action.It was a fitting setting for a play set entirely around a small village station in the steam age. “The Railway Children” follows three children — Bobbie, Peter and Phyllis — who must leave their comfortable London home for a simple cottage in the countryside after their father is imprisoned on suspicion of being spy. The children are cheerfully resilient in the face of sudden poverty and are soon welcomed into the rural community.The audience for “The Railway Children” boards a steam train in Keighley, a town in northern England.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesKeighley is a stop on a railway line that opened in 1867 and closed in 1962. Locals and locomotive enthusiasts later revived the route as a heritage line.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Frederick Forsyth, Master of the Geopolitical Thriller, Dies at 86

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      He wrote best-sellers like “The Day of the Jackal” and “The Dogs of War,” often using material from his earlier life as a reporter and spy.Frederick Forsyth, who used his early experience as a British foreign correspondent and occasional intelligence operative as fodder for a series of swashbuckling, best-selling thrillers in the 1970s and ’80s, including “The Day of the Jackal,” “The Odessa File” and “The Dogs of War,” died on Monday at his home in Jordans, a village north of London. He was 86.His literary representative, Jonathan Lloyd, who confirmed the death, did not specify a cause, saying only that Mr. Forsyth’s had died after a short illness.Mr. Forsyth was a master of the geopolitical nail-biter, writing novels embedded in an international demimonde populated by spies, mercenaries and political extremists. He wrote 24 books, including 14 novels, and sold more than 75 million copies.His stories often juxtapose a single individual against sprawling networks of power and money — an unnamed assassin against the French government in “The Day of the Jackal” (1971), a lone German reporter against a shadowy conspiracy to protect ex-Nazi officers in “The Odessa File” (1972).A film version of “The Day of the Jackal,” starring Edward Fox, right, and Cyril Cusack was released in 1973, just two years after the novel’s publication.George Higgins/Universal Pictures“It’s one man against a huge machine,” he told The Times of London in 2024, explaining why so many readers of “The Day of the Jackal” sided with a hit man intent on killing French President Charles de Gaulle, instead of with the authorities. “We don’t like machines, so one guy even trying to kill a human being, taking on this vast machine of government, secret intelligence service, police and so on, has appeal.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      Chris Brown Released on $6 Million Bail by London Court

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      The R&B singer was charged last week with grievous bodily harm over a 2023 incident in England. His release from custody means he can proceed with a world tour.Chris Brown, the R&B singer, has been freed from custody by a London judge as he awaits a court case over accusations of an assault in a nightclub.Mr. Brown, 36, was arrested last week at a hotel in Manchester, England, and charged with grievous bodily harm.The singer is accused of attacking a music producer with a tequila bottle at Tape London, a nightclub in the Mayfair district, on Feb. 19, 2023.Lawyers representing Mr. Brown applied for him to be bailed at a hearing at Southwark Crown Court in South London on Wednesday, and London’s Metropolitan Police said the application had been granted.The judge’s decision means that Mr. Brown will be able to perform on an international tour that is scheduled to begin in Amsterdam on June 8. He is then set to visit European countries including Germany, Britain, Ireland, France and Portugal before traveling to the United States.The BBC reported that the judge, Tony Baumgartner, imposed a series of conditions on Mr. Brown, including that he must surrender his passport when not on tour and stay away from Tape London.Mr. Brown’s representatives agreed to pay into the court a security fee of five million pounds ($6.7 million), which can be forfeited if any of the conditions are breached.He has not yet been asked to enter a plea in the case, and British law bans the reporting of any details that could prejudice a jury at a future trial.Omololu Akinlolu, 38, an American rapper who performs under the name HoodyBaby, was charged with grievous bodily harm two days after Mr. Brown, in relation to the same incident.Mr. Brown and Mr. Akinlolu are scheduled to appear at a hearing at Southwark Crown Court on June 20. More

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      in Music

      Liam Payne Left a $32.3 Million Estate and No Will, Reports Say

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      Mr. Payne, a former member of the boy band One Direction, died after falling from a third-story hotel balcony in October.Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who died last year after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, left an estate worth 24.3 million pounds, or $32.3 million, but had not written a will before his death, according to British news outlets.Mr. Payne’s former partner, Cheryl Tweedy, will be an administrator of his wealth and property, the BBC and The Guardian reported on Wednesday. Ms. Tweedy, the mother of his 8-year-old son and a former member of the pop group Girls Aloud, shares oversight of the estate with a music industry lawyer but neither may distribute the wealth, the BBC said.Mr. Payne, 31, died in October, after falling from a third-floor hotel balcony while in Argentina, and a toxicology report found he had cocaine, alcohol and a prescription antidepressant in his system at the time of death. A statement from local prosecutors after the death suggested that it was not a suicide because of the determination that he fell in a state of unconsciousness.After an investigation, Argentine authorities charged three people with negligent homicide. Those charges, against a friend of Mr. Payne’s and two employees at the hotel where he died, were later dropped.A CasaSur Palermo Hotel employee and a local waiter are still accused of supplying narcotics to Mr. Payne in the days leading up to his death. The charge they face carries a sentence of four to 15 years in prison. More

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      in Music

      U.K. Folk Bands Use Centuries-Old Ditties to Discuss Prison Abolition, Trans Rights and the Gig Economy

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      Several rising British bands are using centuries-old ditties to discuss hot-button issues like prison abolition, trans rights and the gig economy.Think of English folk music and maybe thoughts come to mind of villagers lamenting lost loves or sailors bellowing tales of adventure at sea.But when the rising British folk band Shovel Dance Collective performs, its members want their listeners to think of more contemporary concerns.At the band’s shows, the singer Mataio Austin Dean sometimes introduces “The Merry Golden Tree,” a song about a badly treated cabin boy, as a tale of “being shafted by your boss” — a scenario many office workers might relate to.The group also performs “I Wish There Was No Prisons” and “A Hundred Stretches Hence”: probable 19th-century ditties that Alex McKenzie, who plays accordion and flute in the group, said could be thought of as pleas for prison abolition.Many folk songs “ring very true” today, McKenzie said: “There’s a very easy thread you can draw between what ordinary people were concerned about 100, 200 years ago, or whatever, and what we’re concerned with now.”Goblin Band performing at the Ivy House, a South London pub that regularly hosts folk nights.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      Jean Marsh, Actress Who Co-Created ‘Upstairs, Downstairs,’ Dies at 90

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      She not only helped develop the hit 1970s show, but also acted in it, and had a decades-long career in film, TV and theater.Jean Marsh, the striking British-born actress who was both the co-creator and a beloved Emmy-winning star of “Upstairs, Downstairs,” the seminal 1970s British drama series about class in Edwardian England, died on Sunday at her home in London. She was 90.The cause was complications of dementia, the filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg, her close friend, said.“Upstairs, Downstairs” captured the hearts, minds and Sunday nights of Anglophile PBS viewers decades before “Downton Abbey” was even a gleam in Julian Fellowes’s eye.The show, which ran from 1971 to 1975 in England and from 1974 to 1977 in the United States, focused on the elegant Bellamy family and the staff of servants who kept their Belgravia townhouse running smoothly, according to the precise social standards of Edwardian aristocracy. Ms. Marsh chose the role of Rose, the household’s head parlor maid, a stern but good-hearted Cockney.The New York Times review, in January 1974, was affectionate. John J. O’Connor described the show as “a charmingly seductive concoction” and a “frequently marvelous portrait.” He praised Ms. Marsh for playing Rose with “the perfection of a young Mildred Dunnock.”By the time the show ended its American run, it had won a Peabody Award and seven Emmys. Ms. Marsh herself took home the 1975 Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a drama series.Robert Blake and Ms. Marsh hold up their Emmys for best actor and best actress in a drama series at the Emmy Awards in 1975.Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      UK Version of ‘Saturday Night Live’ Will Start in 2026

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      A British version of the television sketch comedy program “Saturday Night Live” is set to debut in 2026.“Saturday Night Live” is coming to Britain.A British version of NBC’s late-night comedy sketch show is set to premiere next year on Sky, the broadcaster announced on Thursday. The new edition of the program will have Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator, as executive producer and will feature “a star-studded lineup of hosts.”The familiar catchphrase used to kick off the weekly show will be slightly modified: “Live from London, it’s Saturday night!”Sky said the show would follow a similar format to the American version, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary. It will star a yet-to-be-announced cast of British comedians who will perform sketches, alongside rotating hosts and featured musical acts.“For over 50 years, Saturday Night Live has held a unique position in TV and in our collective culture,” Cécile Frot-Coutaz, the chief executive of Sky Studios, said in the announcement.“The show has discovered and nurtured countless comedy and musical talents over the years, and we are thrilled to be partnering with Lorne and the ‘S.N.L.’ team to bring an all-British version of the show to U.K. audiences.”The remake comes after years of speculation that a British version of the comedy show was in the works. Versions of the program have already been produced around the world, including in Germany, Spain, Italy, China, Japan, South Korea and Egypt. More