Salman Rushdie among 170 figures to sign open letter over Barbican arts lead departure - The Guardian

There have been a fair few Resurrection Symphonies this year, and a positive glut on disc, but Antonio Pappano has form with Mahler and the London Symphony Orchestra can be relied upon to follow where he leads. First, though, the UK premiere of a new work by Dai Fujikura that had precisely nothing to do with the main event but was no less interesting for that. Amber Alchemy, commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Nomura Holdings, was inspired by the beehives atop the Japanese financial company’s London offices. In his programme note, the composer expressed his intention to evoke rather than illustrate, yet it was hard to ignore the orchestral buzz that underpinned much of this engaging 10-minute work. Quivering strings and a shimmer of vibraphones opened proceedings with striking instrumental gestures trailing off in flickering diminuendos. Pappano and the LSO brought a commendable clarity to Fujikura’s intricately interwoven lines, contrasting the music’s romantic outward sweep with its apian inner restlessness. Intention to evoke rather than illustrate… Dai Fujikura with Antonio Pappano at the UK premiere of his Amber Alchemy.

More than sixty artists explore migration, memory, and identity in this survey of Puerto Rican abstraction across and beyond the archipelago. Left: Raphael Collazo, “Arcana Mundi (Mysteries of the World)", 1985; Top right: Olga Albizu, “Blue Oil”, 1974; Bottom right: Raphael Montañez Ortíz, “Archaeological Find #22: The Aftermath”, 1961