Features & Interviews
First Person: Conductor Maxime Pascal on Stockhausen at the Southbank Centre
Tuesday, 21 May 2019
Stockhausen stands alongside Monteverdi and Beethoven as a composer who exploded the understanding of his art. Stockhausen deeply changed the relationship between space, time and music; there’s a human, intimate dimension to his composition, and he predicted the future.
Cannes 2019: Week One - a genre-heavy opening
Sunday, 19 May 2019
Every year the Cannes Film Festival is a swirl of chaos, excitement, and controversy. Last year, the festival had a markedly different feel. Gone were the big starry names.
First Person: Ellen McDougall on finding the...
Sunday, 19 May 2019
I’ve wanted to direct Thornton Wilder’s Our Town for a long time.The play is beautifully written and its form feels not only ahead of its time (...
First Person: Liam Byrne on bringing Versailles...
Saturday, 18 May 2019
When you dedicate your life to studying and performing on a musical instrument that essentially went extinct at the end of the 18th century,...
theartsdesk in Tallinn and Tartu: Estonian Music...
Wednesday, 15 May 2019
First under Soviet rule, then in the remarkable flourishing of a liberated nation, Estonian contemporary music has held its independent head high and...
First Person: Sam Lee on singing with endangered nightingales
The folk singer on streaming for Extinction Rebellion and the Absolute Bird series |
First Person: Robert Hollingworth on I Fagiolini's 'Leonardo - Shaping the Invisible'
Images reflected in music 500 years after the ultimate Renaissance man's death |
Obituary: Bibi Andersson 1935-2019
David Thompson pays tribute to one of cinema's most enduring icons |
For Folk's Sake: 'I owe my very existence to Morris dancing'
Richard Macer, who has made documentaries about Vogue and dyslexia, introduces his latest |
In the spirit of the composer as innovator: Samir Savant on the London Handel Festival
The director presents a month of enterprising events |
theartsdesk in Zanzibar - behind the veil
Searching for the real island at this year's Sauti za Busara festival of African Music |
Keith Flint, 1969-2019
The Prodigy lose their punk brother, Keith Flint, aged only 49 |
A Previn treasury
Selected recordings of the great musician, who has died just short of his 90th birthday |
Trevor Nunn: 'I'm amazed by Harley Granville Barker's prescience and extraordinary modernity'
The veteran director introduces the London premiere of the English dramatist's heretofore unknown play, 'Agnes Colander' |
theartsdesk in Tromsø: the celluloid Cold War
The Tromsø Film Festival in Norway has revealed some little-seen spy films from behind the Iron Curtain |
theartsdesk Q&A: Shirley Collins - 'There was no way I could ever sing to be popular'
Ahead of next week’s Roundhouse concert, the voice of traditional English music reveals some unexpected musical likes and much more |
Director Alexandria Bombach: 'I feel like a completely different person'
Director of On Her Shoulders on filming Yazidi campaigner Nadia Murad |
theartsdesk Q&A: Hedvig Mollestad, Norway's bridge between heavy metal and jazz
The genre-busting guitarist talks about new album 'Smells Funny', a rotting eyeball and more |
'Bringing things to life is what opera is all about': Robert Howarth on a 'Magic Flute' with a difference
Opera North's Mozart conductor on taking a careful look at a masterpiece |
Best of 2018: Classical concerts
Abundant megatalent in works great and small |
Best of 2018: Opera
A year more remarkable for high musical values than any wealth of great UK productions |
Global fiction: the pick of 2018
From Iraq to Japan, a baker's dozen of translated novels to widen literary horizons |
theartsdesk in Brno: Czech 100th feted through Janáček and Smetana
Rarities in a festival featuring an entire operatic canon, plus heartfelt celebrations |
'I’ve told everyone that it’s a comedy – but will anyone laugh?' Jonathan Dove on his new Marx opera
Top British composer awaits Bonn premiere of his new work about a German in London |
theartsdesk in Gothenburg - Wagner's gold turns green
Stephen Langridge talks about his eco-friendly Swedish 'Ring' |
10 Questions for DJ / producer Rob Smith of Smith & Mighty
Bristol bass movers and shakers rightly getting their due |
Robert Hastie: 'a seam of love runs through the play' - interview
The director talks about Macbeth in the candle-lit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, cross-gender casting and the director's role |
Don Quixote rides again, and again
The RSC's stage version reaches the West End, while Terry Gilliam's film is stuck in a legal vortex |
First Person Plural: the Calidore String Quartet on music for their torn nation
How Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Janáček and Golijov speak for our troubled times |
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