Soviet Union
Prom 53: Antonacci, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Nézet-SéguinFriday, 23 August 2013
Prokofiev’s Fifth is a symphony for which the conductor’s setting tends to be turned to either bright and light or dark and heavy. Perhaps because of the composer’s perceived joker role as set against Shostakovich the symphonic chronicler of Soviet... Read more... |
DVD: Burnt by the Sun 2Tuesday, 09 July 2013
Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun was one of the few good news stories in Russian cinema in the Nineties. Made with his longterm scriptwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov, it picked up a main prize at Cannes in 1994 and the Best Foreign Film Oscar the... Read more... |
Alexander Nevsky, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Brabbins, Barbican HallSunday, 10 February 2013
Is Prokofiev’s 1938 score for Alexander Nevsky the greatest film music ever written? Not quite, if only for the fact that Sergei Eisenstein’s second sound-picture glorifying historical role models for the ever more tsar-like Stalin, Ivan the... Read more... |
DVD: Boris Barnet - Outskirts/By the Bluest of SeasTuesday, 13 November 2012
Boris Barnet may not be as well known in film circles as his contemporaries Sergei Eisenstein or Alexander Dovzhenko, but his role in the first decade of Soviet cinema was no less important. What he lacks in the more pronounced... Read more... |
LFF 2012: In the FogFriday, 19 October 2012
In the Fog, Russian director Sergei Loznitsa’s second feature, shows the wartime world of partisans and collaborators fraught with moral uncertainties. Set in 1942 in German-occupied Belorussia, it returns to a theme much explored by Soviet... Read more... |
theartsdesk Olympics: The Golden AgeThursday, 19 July 2012
Rio Ferdinand did four years' ballet training as a child, England manager Graham Taylor sent the national squad to dance classes, while the Royal Ballet once ran an active football team. Ballet and football have long been secret lovers backstage.... Read more... |
DVD: Sherlock Holmes - The Hound of the BaskervillesFriday, 25 May 2012
We in the UK have much enjoyed our contemporary Sherlock Holmes recently, courtesy of Cumberbatch et al. It’s amazing to think that, at the height of the Cold War, Soviet television was bashing out TV versions of the Holmes stories. And they were... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Arts Patron Donatella FlickTuesday, 17 April 2012
Donatella Flick, one of Britain's most important arts patrons, is furious. "Madness!" she cries in her lush Italian voice. "This is a country that was fantastic, and now there's a demolition going on, bit by bit!" We're sitting in Sir Winston... Read more... |
The Master and Margarita, Barbican TheatreFriday, 23 March 2012
The Master and Margarita is a rare beast. Not only is it considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, it also regularly tops reader-lists of all-time favourite books. So it’s no wonder that, since its publication in 1966, 26... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Russian Choreographer Boris EifmanSaturday, 17 March 2012
No choreographer so divides American and British critics as Russia's only international dancemaker, Boris Eifman. He's "an amazing magician of the theatre", according to the late, great US critic Clive Barnes. He "flaunts all the worst clichés of... Read more... |
DVD: Tinker Tailor Soldier SpyTuesday, 17 January 2012
Gary Oldman's shrewd and skilful portrayal of mole-hunter George Smiley has prompted excitable Oscar gossip, but the biggest success of Tinker Tailor... is its creation of a melancholy sealed world where the common currency is secrets, lies and... Read more... |
Collaborators, National TheatreWednesday, 02 November 2011
“Smackhead, groin doctor and smut-scribe”: that’s one way in which writer Mikhail Bulgakov is described in John Hodge’s debut stage drama. A kind of wild fantasia spun around incidents from Soviet history, the piece goes on to show how Bulgakov –... Read more... |
