Norway
Thomas H. Green
Ah, cosmic disco. We’re not supposed to call it that anymore as the DJs and producers who popularised it half a decade ago don’t like it - but that’s what this is. To cut a long story short, a bunch of Norwegians rediscovered a sound that had been popular in Italy in the early Eighties, disco’s electro-funk groove but extended and spaced out, somewhere between Giorgio Moroder and a big fat spliff. The main names among these Scandinavians were Todd Terje, Prins Thomas and Hans-Peter Lindstrøm. The latter, a quiet bearded studio-bound fellow, can claim to be the premier producer of the three as Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Hedda Gabler – the doomy tragedy, the one with the pistol, the “female Hamlet”. We all know the score when it comes to Ibsen. All, that is, except apparently for Sheridan Smith, who recently admitted in an interview that she hadn’t heard of the play before she was asked to take on the lead. It may be a world away from the buxom bar-maids and big-hearted bimbos that have become Smith’s trademark, but the double Olivier Award-winner makes light work of a role that carries the weight of theatre’s greatest actresses.Smaller than almost everyone else on stage, and disappearing into sofas, melting Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Despite Lilyhammer’s sub-zero, snow white Norwegian setting, it is initially difficult to divorce Frank Tagliano from The Sopranos’ Silvio Dante. They’re both played by Steven Van Zandt and both are Mafia men. The suit they wear is the same. Yet Lilyhammer is not The Sopranos in Norway and, by plonking this stereotype into the most unlikely of locations, Van Zandt reveals a flair for nuance formerly obscured by the shadows of others.In The Sopranos, as in the E Street Band, he cemented his image as a side man. Being Bruce Springsteen’s long-term guitarist is probably enough to secure Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s a standard dilemma in film. What to do with the body? In this case, the answer can be seen coming but when it does, it isn’t one that could have occurred outside the world created for the otherwise all too generic Jackpot.Although based on a story by the Norwegian thriller writer Jo Nesbø and co-scripted by him, Jackpot (Arme Riddere) isn’t hard-boiled like his Harry Hole books or intrigue-laden like Headhunters, his novel also recently adapted for film. Instead, it sidesteps depth in favour of a cartoon-style punchiness. Despite it’s washed-out palette, Jackpot isn’t brooding Nordic Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Iceland’s kings of heavy metal Momentum are launching into an assault called “The Creator of Malignign Metaphors”. It’s broad daylight and they’re playing about 10 meters from the kitchen window of a suburban-looking house. The stage is sited on an AstroTurf football pitch, with one of the goals pushed to the side of it. On the opposite side, kids are shimmying down a blow-up slide. Very little about G! conforms with the standard festival experience.G! is the Faroe Islands’ – The Føroyar - annual celebration of its own music. The chocolate-box coastal village of Syðrugøta is the host ( Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach, Beethoven, Schubert Reiko Fujisawa (piano) (Quartz)Each of these three composers makes very specific, particular demands on a pianist’s technique. Playing Bach as sharply and as delicately as this doesn’t suggest that Reiko Fujisawa will be up to the mark when tackling the spongier, more amorphous world of Schubert’s Impromptus, but she’s able to inhabit both sound worlds with ease. Having a mixed programme on CD is such a rare pleasure; this is like listening to a carefully prepared live recital. The Schubert comes at the end of the disc. The major-minor shifts in the first Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It could have been a cow lowing in the distance, the sound drifting across a barren landscape. Its tone transformed after echoing through hillsides and ravines. Actually, it was Karl Seglem blowing into the horn of a goat. Suddenly, he stopped and began wordlessly chanting. The other two musicians on stage at St Luke's kept their heads down and continued providing the sonic wash knitting together this collaboration between the classical, jazz and uncategorisable.Seglem’s diversion into the animalistic was short, but it helped define last night. The union of Christian Wallumrød, Seglem and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although tinged throughout with blue, the Norwegian drama King of Devil’s Island is so grim it might as well be grey. Basing it on real events pitches the film as a cautionary tale, but the message is hard to determine. Everything shies away from explanation. Norwegians might have the context, but the rest of us need to fill in the gaps.Although filmed in Estonia, King of Devil’s Island (Kongen av Bastøy) is set on the island of Bastøy, at the seaward end of the Oslo fjord. Currently, the mile-square island is in use as a prison held as a model of humane rehabilitation. In 1915 it was a Read more ...
fisun.guner
Edvard Munch strikes a heroic pose. Buck naked, he’s pointing a sword at the sky – or perhaps that’s just a stick he’s picked up in the garden, where he’s surrounded by dense greenery as he stands with his arm raised in a taut diagonal. Perhaps he is dreaming of Gram, the Norse Excalibur, and himself as Sigurd. Another photographic self-portrait, taken four years later in 1907, shows the Norwegian artist posing on the beach. This time his modesty is preserved by a loincloth and on this occasion he is holding a palette and brush. But this is not quite the archetypal self-portrait of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“This is such fun”. Martin Horntveth, Jaga Jazzist’s drummer, can’t contain his excitement. Standing up behind his kit, he radiates joy. Considering that he and his band are Norwegian, typically not given to overstatement, what he describes as fun would be off the pleasure scale by non-Nordic standards. The meeting of Jaga Jazzist and The Britten Sinfonia was an unqualified success, one of those rare one-off concerts where band and their temporary collaborators seamlessly connect.The Norwegian instrumentalists and the British ensemble came together at The Barbican last night as part of the on Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“Bergen is the most beautiful city in the world when it doesn’t rain,” said one Norwegian to me. There was a pause. “It always rains in Bergen.” Mention Norway’s second city to anyone and the first reaction is always the same. They don’t describe the UNESCO World Heritage Site that is the quayside Bryggen quarter, nor the city’s astonishing outlook – caught between mountains and sea – nor even the annual Bergen International Festival, the largest festival of its kind in the Nordic countries. They talk about the weather.Not without good reason have Norwegians nicknamed Bergen the City of Rain Read more ...