The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 27

Orchestras in crisis: ANDREW CLEMENTS questions sackings at the Royal Philharmonic; and (below) RICHARD ARMSTRONG rejects radical solutions in Scotland Trouble at pit Rosencrantz and Guiidenstem are back at the National and very much alive, says MICHAEL BILLSNGTON Two toaT jBS concerts. Though the Kirov link could well be severed, with luck not all of Findlay's good work can be undone by the hysterical actions of the RPO's board this week, a knee-jerk reaction to a reported deficit which suggests the memory spans of the directors are of goldfishlike profundity. Do those who were so eager to get rid of the current management really want the orchestra to return to its previous existence of scratching around for freelance dates, just for the sake of a short-term and totally unpredictable financial advantage? Is running an orchestra in the 1990s all about ephemeral financing and nothing to do with artistic standards? Whatever happens to the RPO now, there will be little sympathy for its board, though rather more for the fate of its rank-and-file members, some of whom have already said how ashamed they are of the way in which Findlay and Balfour have been treated. Unless a strong new management team is quickly put in place and who of any stature is going to work for the orchestra having just seen what happened to their predecessors? the orchestra's slide towards mediocrity, which Findlay had worked so hard to forestall, will gain momentum, and London will then have lost one of its orchestras without anyone having to wield the axe. audience for orchestral concerts, initiating a series of concerts at the Albert Hall and placing a greater emphasis upon regular touring in this country.

Under Findlay and Balfour the RPO restyled itself as "Britain's national orchestra" and a regular residency was established in Nottingham as well as an ambitious programme of educational work. If there was a significant mistake in all that reorganisation it was Findlay's handling of the replacement of Vladimir Ashkenazy by Dan-iele Gatti as the RPO's music director, which caused Ashkenazy to severe his links with the orchestra prematurely. BUT in purely artistic terms the move was thoroughly sensible Gatti is one of the most promising of the younger generation of European conductors, while Ashkenazy never produced the kind of results in the concert hall that a musician of his pedigree really ought to have done. But other relationships have prospered, especially the links the orchestra has forged Willi the Kirov Opera in St Petersburg and with its hugely gifted music director Valery Gergiev. Under the RPO's umbrella, the Kirov, unarguably the most exciting opera company in the world at this moment, has given regular London concerts, and Gergiev himself has conducted orchestral AFTER the turmoil and farce of the past five years, nothing that happens in London's orchestral world ought to come as a real surprise.

But the Royal Philharmonic's summary dismissal on Wednesday of its managing director. Paul Findlay, and his head of public relations. Ewan Balfour, was genuinely shocking, not just because of its vicious suddenness the pair were given just an hour to clear their desks and the locks on the orchestra's offices were then changed but because Findlay's achievements in his three yearsat the RPO promised at last to create a genuine artistic role for an orchestra that had long seemed superflous to the capital's requirements. If the consequences of the review of London's orchestral provision left the RPO as the poor relation of the Phil-harmonia and the London Philharmonic, its annual grant cut to the bone, then Findlay had worked manfully to re-establish it in otherarcas.and to avoid the Uindol'hand-to-mouth existence lhat had characterised their life before his arrival forced into endless session work, jingle recordings and lollipop concerts in order to scratch out a subsistence diet. Findlay was keen to switch the focus of the orchestra's London activities away from the South Bank, where it was seen to be competing unsuccessfully for a diminishing by a windowed, transparent, conservatory-style structure behind which the torchlit politics of Hamlet proceed.

It both creates a sense of two worlds and gives the play itself a physical lightness I've rarely known it to possess. But it is the acting which is the evening's chief delight. And again Francis pushes to the limit the contrast between the ratiocinativo Guildenstorn and the slower-witted Rosencrantz. Simon Russell Beale, who simply gets better all the time, plays the former in college scarf and corduroys like sonic intellectual high-flier lumbered with aficltis Achates. He mixes raised eyebrows and weary exasperat ion with, at one point, a very funny jigging excitement at the prospect of an extended verbal rally.

Meanwhile Adrian Scarborough, with beaky profile and close-cropped hair, touchingly suggests Rosencrantz is a likeable mutt who can never quite keep up with hisSocratic friend: the one thing they share is a keen apprehension of death. Alan Howard, in Caroline spaniellike black wig. also lends the Player King a wonderful mixture of actorish hauteur and moral seediness. I still prefer Stoppard's later, more emotionally dynamic plays. But this production has a manic vaudevillian quality that effectively counterpoints the work's inherently self-conscious cleverness.

NEARLY 30 years after its premiere, which made Stop-pard famous overnight, Rosencrantz And Guiidenstem Are Dead is back at the National Theatre. And, even though I still feel that it over-extends a brilliant initial conceit, I readily admit that Matthew Francis's Lyt-telton production with Simon Russell Beale and Adrian Scarborough is as exuberantly funny as any I have seen. My doubts about the play are twofold. Stoppard, by focusing on a pair of attendant figures caught up in incomprehensible events at El-sinore. Hies against the Shakespearean textual evidence that they are ex-friends of Hamlet specifically hired to spy on him.

More seriously, while treating them as symbols of all humanity in that they are trapped in a meaningless universe with death as the only exit, Stoppard also makes them remorselessly self-conscious: I would feel more sympathy with their predicament if they themselves did not so endlessly define it. Francis's production answers that objection in several ways: hy dwelling on the speed and verve of the crosstalk; by highlighting the play's variety of texture; and hy demolishing the stock image of Elsinore as a place of dark impenetrability. In Lez. Brotherston's highly ingenious design, the two heroes find themselves surrounded Alan Howard (left), Adrian Scarborough and Simon RusseU-Beale Fright night at the opera As Brixton flared around them, LUCY O'BRIEN watched Irish rockers Therapy? pound the Academy The riot act, scene two tive Janacek isa regular presence, there are passages harmonised in Messiaen-like modes, while Tippett. in the brassy mosiac style of King Priam, is regularly evoked in the second half of the work.

It is all disturbingly inconsequential, and if this is the introductory movement to a much longer work, as Weir suggests, then what follows will need to be much more sharply individual and more purposeful than anything we've heard so far. Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia, the CBSO strings on opulent form, had begun the programme. It ended with Mahler's Das Lied Von Der Krde in which Rattle chose to use a baritone. Thomas Hampson, rather than a mezzo-soprano; John Mitchinson was the other soloist. It was scrupulously prepared, full of brightly-lit orchestral textures and elegantly rendered solo lines, but otherwise strangely dispassionate.

The full emotional power was almost unleashed in the central section of the final Ahschied, encouraged by Hampson's unfailingly beautiful tone and ample phrasing, hut that was just an isolated passage, and the ending of what should be one of the most affecting works in the whole repertory was stubbornly dry-eyed. Anthvir Clements CLASSICAL WeirRattle Birmingham FOREST is the eagerly-awaited first fruit of Judith Weir's relationship with the CBSO since she replaced Mark-Anthony Turnage as composer-in-associa-tion earner this year. But Wednesday's performance, conducted by Simon Rattle, suggested that she has yet to find her feet in a medium that, until now, she has approached rather uncertainly. The title, says Weir, was suggested by the way in which orchestral lines burgeon and proliferate through the work, creating a forest of possibilities sprouting from a few musical seeds. Yet the sense of something truly organic building through the rather slight 12-min-ule piece is not a bit convincing.

Far from becoming more sure of its own tone of voice, Weir's music seems, over the past couple of years, to have become in real danger of losing its identity, and relying too heavily on oblique backward glances. The scoring of Forest is muddy and unvariegated. There are a few examples of Weir's characteristically torn-ofTphrases, little kernels of lyricism that seem to struggle to express themselves, hut far too much that is deriva LAST week, at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Scottish Opera co-celebrated the life of its founder Sir Alexander Gibson, a man whose musical vision led to the creation of Scotland's national opera company in 1962. More than .10 years on, Scottish Opera is facing hardship over under-funding which would be solved, at one fell swoop, by a small percentage of one of the big London lottery payouts. Robert Dawson Scott rightly points out (Guardian.

December 5) that the situation facing the Scottish national companies is grave and that these organisations arc at each others' throats over a ever-d i i is in cake. He serves only to exacerbate that however, by peddling regurgitated media myths over Scottish Opera's, and my. i ws of orch es ra 1 fa i in Scotland. Certainly. Scott ish Opera has declined to sack its own orchestra (the solution suggested by the Arts Council mandarins) and employ the forces of the three other orchestras in Scotland instead.

Certainly, we have declined the "opportunity" of shoring up the financial fortunes of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and BBC Scott ish Symphony Orchestra. That is a task not for us to fulfil; please see the Scottish Arts Council on that one. Our reject ion of this HENRIETTA BUTLEH guitar. Bassist Michael McKeegan, meanwhile, po-goed on the spot wired, open-faced and smiling and Fyfe Ewing kept a dedicated, merciless beat on drums. Yet though they ground powerfully through tales of alienation, sadism and twisted love.

Therapy? were less threatening confrontation than rock'n'roll entertainment. Each phrase packed a singalong punch, from three-minute blasts of the Troublegum album on Hellbelly and Knives, to the more eloquent material oftheir latest Infernal Love, to their Irish rebel song Potato Junkie with the anthemic line: "James Joyce is fucking my sister." This was hardcore nineties music hall. Even though there was crowd-surfing par excellence, the pounding heat began to grow a little monotonous until the opening of Diane, Hart's shocking song about a remorseful serial killer. Martin McCarrick's plaintive cello and Cairns's soulful, haunting delivery made this one of the show's heartstopping moments. Then the band hurtled on to the encore and a raucous rendition of Screa-mager before the lights came up and someone announced Big Brother-style over the mike: "Brixton Tube station is closed.

When you go out, turn to the right, rather than the left. I repeat, turn to the right." Outside, in an atmosphere of knife-edge tension, 3,500 fans filed down with police protection to Stockwell Tube. What a night. RUPERT STREET LONELY HEARTS CLUB Can it really only lie two years since Harvey shot into the theatre firmament with his gay rites-of-passage plav Beautiful Thing? He returns to the West Knd with a frothy, fraught story ol'Scouse sibling fallout in a London bedsit. On Tuesrfavat the Criterion.

London 1717). LUISA MILLER A chance for a sneak preview ol'Tim Alhery's production of an opera that will be going to Covent Garden next vear. Conducted by I'atil Daniel, who is being seriously courted for the Coliseum job. You heard it hero. On I'ritlav.

Opera North, Leeds WIM-2-15 has disagreed with this view. The Secretary of State for Scotland. Mr Michael Forsyth MP. has recognised the severity of Scottish Opera's situation and is currently hosting discussions between Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet, with a view to possible mutually beneficial collaborations. Robert Dawson Scott contm-ues in his article that "there is no obvious comparison" against which to measure this Scottish Opera Scottish Ballet coalition.

What, no Royal Opera House? No Paris Opera and Paris Opera Ballet? Not even the Bolshoi and Kirov Operas? Perhaps Mr Dawson Scott, unlike us. does not see Scottish Opera in a European context? I am determined in my belief that British opera deserves more than this. It is clear that the troubles threatening Scottish Opera today are awaiting the other opera institutions tomorrow. These threats imperil all that I and countless others have worked for over the past years of operat ic excellence in Britain and mark the beginning of the end for our status worldwide as leaders in the field of musical and artistic innovation. It saddens me immeasurably that our nation cannot muster the support or the will to safeguard the company Sir Alexander Gibson began years ago the company we have been fighting against ali odds to preserve.

Robert Dawson Scott asks "who will blink If the movers and shakers and commentators continue to walk around with their eyes firmly closed they will ensure that for future generations of Scots and Britons our rich cultural landscape will be bleak, barren and silent. Richard Armstrong is musical director ol Scottish Opera naked-lunch theme is fashioned on a scale so fine and intimate it aches with a quite awful vulnerability. Iftikhar Dadi comes across as some kind of post-colonial Warhol. He has raided the image banks of the Oriental and India archives of the British Library, not to mention the Oldham Local History Library, and has set his visual evidence out like clues to widespread cultural crimes. His titles set the grim tone: Cut Off Finger Of A Weaver From Bengal.

Spy With Hands And Nose Cut Off. His prints, however, are carefully multi-layered to resist simplistic political interpretation and to suggest the complexity and historical mess of the situation. Even his silver-sprayed picture frames are embedded with rows of tiny cogs, endless wheels within wheels. Elsewhere he photographs popular Urdu films direct from the TV screen, deliberately using slow shutter speeds so each image is haunted by its after-image. These photographs of films of fictions are the most real things around.

Tampered Surface is at Oldham Art Gallery (0161-91 4653) until January 7 It then tours to Middlesbrough Art Gallery; Leeds Metropolitan University: Bluecoat Gallery, Liwrnnol nnrl UNESCO P-ir-i "patchwork quilt" arrangement is no reflection whatever on the outstanding quality of these other musical organisations, for whom I have the utmost respect. Indeed, until relatively recently. Scottish Opera had high hopes of an artistic partnership between the Orchestra of Scottish Opera and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra which would have gone some why to solving both orchestra's difficulties. Our repudiation of the suggestion to disband our orchestra is. rather, based on two tenets.

One: The financial equations of th is scenario simply do not add up. Much work has been expended both by Scottish Opera's management and Board and by our independent auditors; it is clear that the sums do not work. Two: It is the firmly held belief of the Board of Directors of Scott ish Opera, of Richard Jarman, the General Director, and a principle of mine, that artistic control over the orchestral resource is essential to sustain the widely acknowledged artistic and musical standards for which the company is renowned. The dedication of a group of musicians to performing opera and providing the heartbeat of an opera company is a primary feature of the world's most successful operatic organisations. During this entire debate on our future, not one person knowledgeable about the workings of top-class opera companies Westerners.

Yet the experiences that are evoked and embodied in this hybrid art are something else. The surface that has been tampered with in the work of these six artists appears to he the facade of post-colonial coherence. The figurative warpings and glaring colour confrontations of western Expressionism are mixed with an enigmatic poetry of mythical imagery that is distinctly un-West-ern. The doubts and torments of the struggle for individual self-definition are set against a resonant spirituality that western mainstream culture has long ago renounced or lost. So the most arresting work in this touring show is that i which these oppositions are drawn to their most potent artistic tension.

Sumaya Durrani's lithographic series, Faceless Nudes, builds up a seemingly amazed yet plaintive pictorial fable peopled by page 3 pin-ups and overlaid by florid patternings of lace doilies, ceramic plates and fragmented texts. Her personal perspective on the sexual politics of the OUTSIDE helicopters were circling overhead and a phalanx of police had cordoned off Brixton Road. Just as Irish rockers Therapy? launched into Epilepsy, word went round the crowd that the 7-Eleven was on fire. Ironically Wednesday night's riot was a fitting backdrop for neurotic bass-driven hardcore. It was also a distraction.

This was the trio's last English show before homecoming Christmas dates in Dublin and Belfast. The air of relaxed celebration was tempered by speculation and excite A dose of Therapy? Andy TRAINSPOTTING So it 'snot as good as the book. But Harry Gibson's stage adaptation stilt gives you a flavour of Irvine Welsh's disturbing novel of pain and needles in lidinburgh. At the Ambassadors, London WC2 (1)1 7VH3H-S1 I 1). DIANA ROSS Glamorous dresses, torch songs, much emoting and bags of sincerity the diva of soul makes her only UK appearance of the year with material from her latest album.

Tomorrow, at tlw Hirminii-ham NEC (0121-7111) 11 Xi). NO SLEEP TILL SHEFFIELD: PULP GO PUBLIC Jarvis Cocker has discovered the joy of how being a nerdv outsider in one's ment about the chaos outside who'd been beaten up on the way there, would we get out alive? Lead singer Andy Cairns's only reference to the conflagration was that, rather than booing their support act Grant Hart (ex-drummer of US punk terrorists Husker Du, writer of last single Diane, and someone not appreciated by the throng), the crowd should direct their anger outside, to "Fuck da With his chiselled sideburns and goatee beard, and lit from below with a red light. Cairns resembled a cartoon Beelzebub on Cairns HOULRIA PAHKIN youth means that a successful career can be built on writing clever pop songs about it. This bandon-the-mad documentary might shed some light on how much of the gangling foy-ness is for real and how much is just a good performance. On Monday.

HI3C2 ti.l.jpm. FIVE EASY PIECES Boh Rafelson's 1970on-the-road movie, with a then-wavy-haired Jack Nicholson as the redneck oilrigger who is really on the run from his decent concert-attending family. Remember the waitress-baiting scene in the diner the order for toast which divides the audience between those who think the waitress i a pain and those who think she's a pain but he's a mean bastard? On Tuesday. UI1C2 ll.2t)im. ROBERT CLARK finds a strange familiarity in the art of Pakistan Surface tensions LOOKING at Tampered Surface, a show ol'art from the other side of the world, I am struck by a peculiar sense of deja vu.

The artists are from Pakistan, but thepaintingand sculpture techniques are familiarly western. Pictorial space is fragmented and layered, collage-style. Textures are thick and gritty. Images are set side by side with no obvious reference to narrative cause andelTect.Thisis.of course, all old-hat standard stulTfor blase ex-modernist LONDON COMEDY FESTIVAL 1995.