Soviet Union
theartsdesk in Tallinn: 23rd European Film AwardsSunday, 05 December 2010
Roman Polanski’s The Ghost won five of the seven European Film Awards it was nominated for last night. It was a display of the sort of sentimental herd mentality familiar from the Oscars which the European Film Academy’s voters like to feel they... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Siberia: Cold Comfort KrasnoyarskSunday, 28 November 2010
In England you may joke about having Siberian weather with minus 7 degrees. This is really what Siberian winter looks like - at minus 26 degrees. The river is gushing steam, a hellishly peculiar sight. After travelling for 16 hours and through seven... Read more... |
Simon McBurney On Creating A Dog's HeartMonday, 22 November 2010
For anyone who grew up in the former Soviet Union, Heart of a Dog is a seminal text. But it’s also in the great tradition of Gogol and all the Russian satirists. It springs out into absolutely delicious flights of fantasy, but really sharp-edged.... Read more... |
Farewell, Rudolf Barshai (1924-2010)Saturday, 06 November 2010
"Who?" many readers may be asking. You'll have to take it on trust - and a handful of outstanding recordings - that the Russian conductor, viola player and arranger, who died on 2 November aged 86, really was up there among the musical greats of his... Read more... |
The Makropulos Case, English National OperaTuesday, 21 September 2010
Opera spends so much of its time killing off female protagonists that it's refreshing to come back to The Makropulos Case. In it Janáček, in one of his many moments of generosity, imagines what might happen if you allowed a woman not just to live... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Composer Rodion ShchedrinSaturday, 18 September 2010
The Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin has long been damned faintly by two facts - that he is the husband of the Bolshoi prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and that he was for a long time the president of the Russian Composers' Union in the USSR. These... Read more... |
Interview: Alim Qasimov, Mugam MaestroThursday, 16 September 2010
With his sublime renditions of Azerbaijan's classical music, Alim Qasimov is one of the world's great performers. On the eve of the singer's appearance at the Barbican’s Transcender Weekend of spiritual trance music, where he is performing this... Read more... |
Blood and Gifts, National TheatreTuesday, 14 September 2010
What is with the National and history plays? On the large stages of this theatre, the main fare is historical accounts of contemporary problems. Maybe the programmers here imagine that their audiences, like T S Eliot’s humankind, “can’t bear very... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bregenz: The Genius of Mieczyslaw WeinbergSunday, 08 August 2010
Ever since I can remember, the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg has played a walk-on part in histories of Soviet music. If you find him in an index at all (probably under Vainberg or Vajnberg, and usually with the first name given him by a box-ticking... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Impresarios Victor and Lilian Hochhauser, Part 2Friday, 06 August 2010
In the second part of this historic career overview interview with the unique British impresarios, Victor and Lilian Hochhauser talk about their razor-edged relations with Soviet apparatchiks and the pressures they came under to prevent artist... Read more... |
Spartacus, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 19 July 2010
Roll up, roll up for the ancient Roman circus of a production almost as old as I am. Thrill to the catchy tunes and the oom-pah basses of flash Aram Khachaturian, played with the kind of lurid splendour you thought could only be faked on Soviet-era... Read more... |
Picasso Special - Picasso: Peace and Freedom, Tate LiverpoolMonday, 24 May 2010
Picasso the genius, the sensualist, the womaniser, the priapic beast. This much we think we know of the great Spanish artist. But how about Picasso the political activist? Picasso the supporter of women’s causes? Picasso the… feminist? Oh, yes, that... Read more... |
