Nowadays there are no original anythings apart from art.
Like Schoenberg, he was not primarily a symphonist; his early Symphony in E-flat Major (1905 07) is no more original than anything of other Russians such as Borodin or Aleksandr Glazunov.
It's also slightly disappointing that Chase and Status felt they had to do this, not least because No More Idols contains good ideas – some of the music here is more original than anything on their debut album.
In short, Mac is a theatre artist through and through — no aspect of the stage is alien to him — but what I remember most when I think of him is his voice: his sweet singing, almost contralto at times, is as original as anything else he does, and isn't the artist's voice what we look for when we go to the theatre?
But then sometimes an old game re-envisioned for a new platform is more original than anything else out there.
His original song "Anything for Money" is featured on the show.
Ironically, in reality, what you're likely to find on the other side of a rusted gate entrance (say, a table tennis hall with a largely Asian clientele) is far more original than anything the movies regularly cook up.
Dave Simpson in The Guardian said the piece, "best experienced as a whole", was "not an idle fantasy, and emerges as a fascinating and powerful discourse on the struggle between art and commerce, and the destructive power of celebrity", calling the musical "a bold, major work – as compelling and original as anything in their sporadically brilliant career".
Still, I knew all but a couple of the 30 songs performed, and for the most part the music sounded like a reasonable sonic facsimile of the originals, minus anything resembling spontaneity or authenticity.
In all, the disk shows us how much the British did in the twentieth century to preserve classical ballet, and how they performed it: softly, and with lots of acting — a manner probably truer to the originals than anything we have now.
