Denmark
JaujaThursday, 09 April 2015
In the past decade or so the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso’s minimalist masterworks have earned him an ardent, if particular following. With Jauja he’s moved beyond his comfort zone, by using professional actors for the first time and with more... Read more... |
Just in From Scandinavia: Nordic Music Round-Up 13Thursday, 02 April 2015
Very often, the greatest impact comes without shouting. Subtlety can have a power lingering longer than the two-minute thrill of a yell. So it is with Bridges, the eighth album by Eivør. In the past, the Faroese singer-songwriter has collaborated... Read more... |
A Second ChanceMonday, 16 March 2015
Susanne Bier follows the disappointing Serena with a well-acted and worthy drama that confronts societal prejudice, the sticky issues around child protection, and our inability to see what's right under our noses. Despite the plot's predictable and... Read more... |
Von Otter, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanThursday, 19 February 2015
Hair-raising guaranteed or your money back: that might have been a publicity gambit, had there been one, for Sakari Oramo’s latest journey with the BBC Symphony Orchestra around a Nielsen symphony. That he knows the ropes to scale the granite cliff... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Aalborg: Northern Winter Beat 2015Sunday, 08 February 2015
It’s the kind of care-worn venue that’s obviously seen some history. The walls are plastered with handbills for uncompromising bands like Billy Childish’s The Headcoats and America’s God Bullies. Some nosing reveals that it opened in 1983 and Green... Read more... |
Colli, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican HallSaturday, 17 January 2015
Was 1911 the best ever year for music? Works premiered or composed then include Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and the Tenth Symphony he’d completed in outline by the time of his death that May,... Read more... |
Ohlsson, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanSaturday, 13 December 2014
How disorienting it is to find century-old works in the concert repertoire of which you can still say “I’ve never heard anything like it”. That must have been the reaction of most audience members last night to Tuscan-German composer Ferruccio... Read more... |
The Legacy, Sky Arts 1Thursday, 27 November 2014
It’s a dark and Danish so of course there is a body. But it’s not that sort of body. The Legacy parts company from what we know of most Nordic television drama. It’s neither a fetid charnel house in which the cops are as freaky as the killers. Nor... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actress Sofie GråbølSaturday, 06 September 2014
Sofie Gråbøl as Danish royalty: it hardly stretches credulity. The face of Nordic noir has been a star in her home country ever since appearing in Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror in 1987, but is solely familiar on these shores as Sarah Lund, the... Read more... |
Prom 34: Piemontesi, BBCNOW, SøndergårdTuesday, 12 August 2014
Some things that spread like wildfire, like ebola and wildfire itself, are not good news at all. But performing Nielsen’s symphonies? That’s another matter entirely. In the next concert season, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia both... Read more... |
The James Plays, Edinburgh Festival TheatreTuesday, 12 August 2014
Rona Munro's history cycle may take some liberties with the facts, as the writer admits in the programme notes, but its broad narrative sweep has been talked about as a state-of-the-Scottish-nation trilogy. It's the first joint production of the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Aarhus: SPOT Festival 2014Sunday, 11 May 2014
At last night’s Eurovision Song Contest, host country Denmark submitted “Cliché Love Song”, a weedy Bruno Mars-a-like designed to ensure they did not win for a second year running. It came ninth. While understandable that Danish national broadcaster... Read more... |
