Norway
Erik Poppe and Andrea Berntzen: 'When white young men do stuff like this, we just shake our heads'Friday, 26 October 2018
On 22nd July 2011, on a tiny island off the Norwegian coast, 69 young people were killed, with another 109 injured in a terrorist attack. It was the darkest day in Norway since World War Two, and one that is still evident in its news, politics and... Read more... |
The Wild Duck, Almeida Theatre review - meta, merciless and altogether brilliantThursday, 25 October 2018
Beware the smile that Edward Hogg wears like a shield in the opening scenes of The Wild Duck, the Ibsen play refashioned into the most scalding production in many a year by Robert Icke, here in career-surpassing form. Playing James Ekdal, the... Read more... |
CD: Jessica Sligter - Polycrisis: yes!Sunday, 30 September 2018
The voice of Jean-Claude Juncker does not habitually turn up on albums. Jessica Sligter's Polycrisis: yes! though features extracts from a 2010 speech by he, the President of the European Commission on “The Dream has Died” and “The State of the... Read more... |
10 Questions for singer Live Foyn FriisTuesday, 18 September 2018
Norwegian-Danish singer Live Foyn Friis (for English-speaking readers, Live is her first name) has released six albums, and leads several different ensembles, scattered intriguingly across the divide between jazz and pop. Her voice is recognisably... Read more... |
CD: Moskus - MiraklerThursday, 16 August 2018
Last month, theartsdesk reviewed Skadedyr’s Musikk!, an eccentric album which skipped “through jazz, traditional music, atonal scrapings and wind instrument burblings.” Twelve Norwegian musicians were heard. Amongst them were Fredrik Luhr... Read more... |
CD: Skadedyr - Musikk!Wednesday, 25 July 2018
In spirit if not musical style, Musikk! shares chromosomes with late-Sixties ESP-label mavericks like Cro Magnon and Octopus, as well as The Residents of Meet the Residents, early This Heat and the Rock in Opposition collective. Sun Ra is in there... Read more... |
Der fliegende Holländer, Longborough Festival review - stand and deliver on an empty stageThursday, 07 June 2018
Brilliant and innovative though it is in many respects, The Flying Dutchman is by no means a straightforward piece to stage. It’s an odd, sometimes uncomfortable mixture of the genre and the epic. At Sadler’s Wells in the sixties they had a little... Read more... |
CD: Espen Eriksen Trio with Andy Sheppard - Perfectly UnhappyFriday, 04 May 2018
Perfectly Unhappy’s sixth track makes the album’s case. Until this point, Andy Sheppard’s playing has largely gone with the flow; working through and around the melodies pianist Espen Eriksen has composed for his trio’s first recorded collaboration... Read more... |
Violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing: 'in the moments when magic happens, you think, that's why we do this'Saturday, 28 April 2018
In a classical recording industry seemingly obsessed with marketing beautiful young female violinists, but very often presenting them in repertoire to which most of them seem to have little individual to add, how do you make your mark? Norwegian... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Borgström, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Alec Frank-GemmillSaturday, 28 April 2018
Borgström: Violin Concerto, Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 Eldbjørg Hemsing (violin), Wiener Symphoniker/Olari Elts (BIS)Hjalmar Borgström sounds like the name of a BBC Four gumshoe, a melancholy detective solving crimes in downtown... Read more... |
Occupied, series 2, Sky Atlantic review - political conflicts looking all too actualThursday, 19 April 2018
Eight months have passed since the Russians invaded Norway in the first season of Jo Nesbo’s neo-Cold War thriller. Real-life events have only made Occupied seem more relevant. Like Conrad’s novel Under Western Eyes, it dramatises the clash between... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Radka Toneff and Steve DobrogoszSunday, 08 April 2018
Fairytales is lovely. It opens with a subtle version of Jimmy Webb’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” which merges Radka Toneff’s emotive and intimate vocal with Steve Dobrogosz’s sparse piano lines. The ingredients are minimal, there is no... Read more... |
