Front Row: Archive 2014

Timothy Spall has brought JMW Turner to life in Mike Leigh's new film, Mr Turner - he tells Damian Barr how he did so, learning to paint like the master and using his own love of the sea. The Picasso museum in Paris closed for renovation in 2009, and was scheduled to re-open two years later. But the work took four years longer than that, went over budget and culminated in the sacking of the museum's president. Waldemar Januszczak reviews the refurbishment. Damian talks to the legendary Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires, who at the age of seventy has recorded Beethoven's Piano Concertos for the first time. And Memphis, the musical, arrives in the UK, starring Beverley Knight and Killian Donnelly. A story of music, race and America in the fifties, how well does it work on the London stage? Gaylene Gould reviews. Presenter: Damian Barr Producer: Sarah Johnson.