Norway
theartsdesk in Oslo: The Tape to Zero FestivalWednesday, 09 April 2014
The on-stage collaboration between north-Norwegian ambient maestro Biosphere and his similarly inclined but sonically darker countryman Deathprod was a one off. At Oslo’s Tape to Zero festival, Biosphere and Deathprod bought the you-had-to-be-there... Read more... |
Mammon, More4Saturday, 29 March 2014
Well, that was a bit of a brain workout for the first episode - I confess for much of the opening instalment (five more to follow) I didn't have a clue what was going on, who anybody was or how all the characters and a multitude of story strands... Read more... |
Listed: The Vikings - Life and LegendTuesday, 04 March 2014
The British Museum's exhibition The Vikings: Life and Legend promises to redefine the Viking age for a new generation. First seen at the National Mueum in Copenhagen, it has now travelled - much as the show's subjects once did - across the North Sea... Read more... |
Berlinale 2014: Cathedrals of CultureFriday, 14 February 2014
Back at the Venice Biennale in 2010, the German film director Wim Wenders showed a 3D video installation titled “If Buildings Could Talk”.Exploring the theme of how architecture interacts with human beings, and attempting to capture the soul of the... Read more... |
Berlinale 2014: Nymphomaniac, In Order of Disappearance, AloftWednesday, 12 February 2014
Stellan Skarsgård is having a good Berlinale. The veteran Swedish actor proved the main calming influence in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Volume One (***), which the Berlin festival screened as a world premiere in the director’s version, running at... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: Barocking Handel in the Opera HouseSunday, 09 February 2014
Oslo is a winter wonderland, and adults seem to be outnumbered by children, flocking from all over Norway to Disney on Ice. It’s the deep snow and the silence in pockets of the city rather than the kids which make me wonder if anyone has set Handel’... Read more... |
Saga's odours, Sara's jumpers, Birgitte's blokeThursday, 09 January 2014
How come there is always a free parking space right outside the police station’s front door as Saga Norén draws up? If she has malodourous armpits, what must her manky leather trousers smell like? What does her partner in investigation Martin Rohde... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: Pushing folk’s frontiersSunday, 06 October 2013
Four days in Norway’s capital attending Folkelarm, the festival of Nordic folk music, raises the perennial and always knotty question of how far music can move beyond the traditional yet still be labelled as folk? With the charming and reassuringly... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Fidelio in BergenSunday, 06 October 2013
In the listening room of Grieg Hall, Bergen, a concert hall sometimes masquerading as a theatre and vice versa, I talk to Mary Miller, director of Bergen National Opera, and Andrew Litton, music director of the venerable Bergen Philharmonic... Read more... |
Prom 69: Hadland, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, PetrenkoWednesday, 04 September 2013
May I be permitted a rude, opinionated intermezzo between reflections on Vasily Petrenko’s two Oslo Philharmonic Proms, and before Marin Alsop steps up to great expectations for the Last Night? Here’s another Russian in trouble, not for keeping mum... Read more... |
Prom 68: Skride, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, PetrenkoTuesday, 03 September 2013
The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra made quite a splash with their Tchaikovsky symphony series under Mariss Jansons back in the 1980s. The watchwords then were freshness and articulation, a re-establishment of Tchaikovsky’s innate classicism - and so it... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Stavanger: A touch of FröstSunday, 01 September 2013
Three great pianists, one of the world’s top clarinettists and two fine string players in a single concert: it’s what you might expect from a chamber music festival at the highest level. What I wasn’t anticipating on the first evening in Stavanger... Read more... |
