Pierre-Laurent Aimard
(Pentatone, two CDs)
Kurtág himself approved Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s selection of 81 pieces from the composer’s 10 volumes of miniature pieces, now among the past half century’s great achievements

In 1973, György Kurtág began composing piano miniatures to which he gave the collective title of Játékok (Games). He has continued to add to the series, so that now there are well over 400 such pieces, for both solo piano and four hands, which have been published in 10 volumes so far. The pieces, rarely more than a couple of minutes long and sometimes lasting just a few seconds, were first intended as didactic exercises, designed to elucidate a musical point or a detail of keyboard technique, but the collection soon began to encompass other occasional works and more personal expressions – birthday greetings, tributes and memorials to friends and fellow musicians, paraphrases of other music – becoming a complete encyclopedia of Kurtág’s compositional methods.

The composer and his wife, Márta, who died in 2019, regularly performed pieces from the growing collection in their recitals together, as well as recording a number of them. Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s selection, approved by Kurtág and recorded with him in attendance, takes in a total of 81 pieces drawn from all the published volumes, with the exception of the fourth and eighth, books of pieces for piano duet and two pianos, but also including some that are still in manuscript that will appear in the as yet unpublished 11th volume.

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Everyman, Liverpool
Nathan Powell sets out his stall with a crowd-pleasing play about intergenerational tensions in a Caribbean cafe

This play by Nathan Powell, appointed creative director at Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse last year after Suba Das’s departure, is not a tightly structured, slick affair. But, directed by Amanda Huxtable, it is enormous fun, full of heart and undeniably entertaining. If this first play is a measure of his ambition, Powell intends to be a crowd-pleaser. Takeaway wouldn’t be out of place in the unabashedly popular Royal Court across town.

The title refers to Hyltons, a community-loved, family-run Caribbean cafe headed up by matriarch Carol (Phina Oruche) and her two “British pickney” adult daughters, Browning (Adi Alfa) and Shelly (Bene Sebuyange). At the heart of Toxteth, “Toccy” to the locals, the takeaway is set to become a victim of gentrification, a change against which local young people are either rioting or leading an uprising, depending on which character’s point of view you agree with. Either way, the local football pitches are being set ablaze and the offices of the would-be property developers are under attack.

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Going back out on tour, the 13-time Grammy winner recalls stark inspirations and steamy studio sessions as she answers your questions

You’ve had a decades-long career. When did you first feel that you had “made it ”? LondonLuvver
I wasn’t expecting to do music for a job. I was into social activism in college, and I just had music as a hobby. My boyfriend managed a bunch of blues artists and I asked if I could open for some of them – just to have fun and hang out with my heroes. Unbeknown to me, there really weren’t any women playing blues guitar and doing the mix of songs [I was], and I immediately got more offers of gigs and even a record company offer within about a year. That first gig I got under my own name, when I was 19, was a total surprise: that’s when I felt I had made it.

How was it growing up with a father [ John Raitt ] who was such a big Broadway star? Abbeyorchards7
He had hits in the 1940s with Carousel, and in the 50s with The Pajama Game. By the time I was 10 or 11, he was on the road touring in the summer – he loved taking Broadway shows out to the countryside. That influenced me a lot later when I decided to veer off from college and go into music: his love of travelling, of every night being opening night, and putting everything he had into every performance. And he was on tour basically until his mid-80s, so I think that had a tremendous influence on me: like, we can’t believe we get paid, and this is our job.

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The Next Big Story competition, run by writing school The Novelry, is encouraging entries from would-be authors ‘historically overlooked by the publishing industry’

A new competition is offering £75,000 to an aspiring writer based on just three pages of their novel.

Actor Emma Roberts, Bridgerton author Julia Quinn and Booker-winning Life of Pi author Yann Martel are among the judges for The Next Big Story competition, run by online fiction writing school The Novelry.

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As the wrestler turned action hero turns 53, we count down his best movies – from Baywatch to Jumanji to that time he played the Tooth Fairy

Dwayne Johnson is about to violently switch gears. His next films include a Benny Safdie drama about an MMA fighter battling addiction and a true-crime drama produced by Martin Scorsese. The reason for this abrupt handbrake turn towards grownup film-making seems to be Red One ; a duff Christmas action film. During its production, tales of Johnson’s backstage behaviour leaked out: the star was said to frequently be late, and would habitually hand his assistant bottles of urine rather than walk to the toilet . It was the biggest knock to The Rock since his career began. But onwards and upwards.

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(True Panther Sounds)
Inspired by Mariah and Kylie but full of jackhammer rhythms and noise, the quartet’s second album could attract a big following

You can see why Model/Actriz’s 2023 debut album Dogsbody attracted a lot of approving critical attention. In an era when rock music largely leans towards familiarity – where originality has essentially come to mean rearranging recognisable sounds from the past in a relatively fresh way – here was a band who genuinely didn’t seem to sound much like anyone else.

The Brooklyn quartet had released a handful of noisy singles pre-Covid, which attracted vague comparisons to the notoriously challenging clangour of the late 70s no wave movement or the frenetic dance-punk of Liars, an outlier band on the far left field of the early 00s New York scene that gave the world the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs . But on Dogsbody they honed their sound into something entirely their own.

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They were snubbed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But their dedicated followers – from Bernie Sanders to Maroon 5 – know they exemplify a uniquely American tradition

Bernie Sanders has called them “one of the great American rock bands”. They’ve been together since 1983, selling out stadiums and hosting festivals where they’re the only band on the bill, drawing tens of thousands. Last week, they won the fan vote for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with 330,000 votes , beating the runner-up, the rock supergroup Bad Company, by 50,000.

Yet outside the US, Phish may be best known as the inspiration for Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food flavor. They’ve never had a significant mainstream hit. And when the Hall of Fame inductees were announced on Sunday, Phish wasn’t among them. Bad Company was. Many fans seemed unbothered: “Phish is too out there, too innovative, not mainstream,” wrote one on a fan message board. “Hall of Fame just isn’t a Phish thing.” Added another: “Let the disdain and misunderstandings continue.”

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After her announcement of her transition, the actor said: ‘I loved and supported Aaron as my son, and now I love and support Airyn as my daughter’

Robert De Niro has expressed support for his daughter Airyn after she came out as transgender.

In a statement to Deadline , De Niro said: “I loved and supported Aaron as my son, and now I love and support Airyn as my daughter. I don’t know what the big deal is … I love all my children.”

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Director Nisha Ganatra said she felt they ‘owed audiences to make it right’ in the new film

The director and leading cast member of Freakier Friday, the soon-to-be-released sequel to Disney’s 2003 body-swap comedy Freaky Friday, have criticised the “hurtful” Asian stereotypes of the older film and said they “owed audiences to make it right”.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, director Nisha Ganatra, a Canadian whose parents were first generation immigrants from India , said of the 2003 film: “I remember watching it and feeling torn, mostly about the Asian representation … It was something I brought up right away when I had my first meetings with the producers. I had a moment of the presentation that was like, ‘problematic Asian representation!’”

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