Norway
Lise Davidsen, Leif Ove Andsnes, Barbican review - perfect Grieg, impressive Strauss and WagnerFriday, 14 January 2022
After a too-much-too-soon debut disc, Lisa Davidsen has just rolled out the gold on CD with her great fellow Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes in songs by their compatriot Grieg. The visuals last night, in the first concert of a Barbican mini-residency,... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2021: Frida Hyvönen - Dream Of IndependenceFriday, 24 December 2021
Frida Hyvönen’s UK profile isn’t as high as it is in her home country Sweden. Over here, what she gets up to is less apparent than the activities of some of her more heavily marketed fellow Swedes. Hence Dream Of Independence coming as a surprise,... Read more... |
Hedvig Mollestad, National Jazz Scene, Oslo review - watch out, there’s a storm aboutThursday, 02 December 2021
The opening moments don’t suggest what’s coming. A solo flute is followed by a few spoken phrases from a treated voice. What’s being said? It’s impossible to work it out. Is it a warning? An electric guitar’s strings are stroked with a cello bow.... Read more... |
Album: Electric Eye - HorizonsWednesday, 03 November 2021
Bergen’s Electric Eye’s pithy description of themselves is “psych-space-drone-rock from Norway.” They also say they “play droned out psych-rock inspired by the blues, India and the ever-more expanding universe.” Horizons is their fourth studio album... Read more... |
Album: The Eivind Aarset 4-Tet - Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of JourneyThursday, 16 September 2021
Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey instantly sets its controls for an excursion into the interstellar void between gaseous and solid objects. Opening cut “Intoxication” begins with lightly pulsing bass and a keyboard texture. Shimmering... Read more... |
The North Water, BBC Two review - a terrible voyage into the great beyondSaturday, 11 September 2021
It’s perhaps unfortunate that The North Water arrives on BBC Two only a few months after The Terror, since it’s impossible to avoid the parallels between them. They’re set only a few years apart (1859 for The North Water, 1845 for The Terror), both... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: conductor Klaus MäkeläThursday, 25 March 2021
Let the facts – and the music-making you can see and hear online – speak for themselves first. Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä became the Oslo Philharmonic’s chief conductor last September, at the age of 24; he takes up the same post with the... Read more... |
Album: Elephant9 - Arrival Of The New EldersMonday, 01 February 2021
Arrival Of The New Elders is unlike anything Norwegian trio Elephant9 have done before. Previously, their jazz-prog mélange was as full-on as it could be. Attacking, hard and heavy. Now, a previously unfamiliar pensiveness has been revealed.While... Read more... |
Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch, Royal Academy review - juxtapositions that confuse rather than clarifyTuesday, 15 December 2020
Even before going to art school, Tracey Emin discovered the work of the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. And even though he was born 100 years before her, she embraced him as a kindred spirit. One can see why. Whether painting figures,... Read more... |
Oslo Philharmonic, Mäkelä online review - focus, flair and midwinter heartbreakThursday, 10 December 2020
Artists’ management Harrison Parrott has started a concert streaming platform called Virtual Circle on emusiclive.com, launched two days ago and only available as a live event - no catch-ups. Watching its debut concert - the Oslo Philharmonic with... Read more... |
Album: Annie - Dark HeartsWednesday, 14 October 2020
The term electro-pop has kind of lost its meaning, The Top 20 has, for many years, been full of music created on computers, from Charli XCX to BTS to Clean Bandit. Yet still, as a genre header, it's often used to refer to music that riffs on the... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Ole Bull, Vítězslav Novák, SchumannSaturday, 10 October 2020
Ole Bull: Stages of Life Annar Follesø (violin), Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Eun Sun Kim, with Wolfgang Plagge (piano) (2L)Schumann thought that the Norwegian violinist and composer Ole Bull (1810-1880) was as accomplished a player as Paganini,... Read more... |
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