Norway
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... |
theartsdesk in Bodø: a World of Music inside the Arctic CircleSunday, 11 August 2013
“Rock ‘n’ roll was invented in Bodø about 1922,” declares Elvis Costello before kicking into “A Slow Drag With Josephine”. “Then it crept down to Trondheim,” he continues. “Then the squares in Oslo got it about 1952.” Up here, 25km inside the Arctic... Read more... |
Just in From Scandinavia: Nordic Music Round-Up 8Thursday, 01 August 2013
Characterising a country’s music by its most successful exports or what seem to be typical local styles is inevitable. With Iceland, the home of Björk and Sigur Rós, it’s easy to assume that ethereality, otherworldliness and plain oddness rule the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Røros, Norway: Fiddling amongst the slag heapsSunday, 07 July 2013
It’s just before midnight on Friday. A few hundred couples circle the floor of a school gym. On stage, violinists play a rhythmic music which cycles repetitively. Coloured with sad, minor notes, it sounds like a stately ancestor to bluegrass. Hands... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: Trumpets sound for MunchSunday, 23 June 2013
Back in the 19th century it was violinist Ole Bull who put Norway on the musical map, likened by Schumann to Paganini and celebrated across Europe for his supreme virtuosity. More recently pianist Leif Ove Andsnes has emerged as the nation’s... Read more... |
