Sweden
Classical CDs Weekly: Korngold, Gabriel Prokofiev, Barbara HanniganSaturday, 30 May 2020
Korngold: Violin Concerto, String Sextet Andrew Haveron (violin), RTÉ Concert Orchestra/John Wilson, Sinfonia of London Chamber Ensemble (Chandos)Erich Korngold began writing his String Sextet in 1914, when he was just 17. Listeners immune to... Read more... |
Classical Music/Opera direct to home 11 - more phased returns to creative workFriday, 15 May 2020
At last, it seems, one venerable British institution will be emulating what Scandinavian and Czech set-ups have been managing over the past month: live performances from an audience-less venue, though in sound only. In quickly reorganised scheduling... Read more... |
Sondheim at 90 Songs: 5 - 'Every Day A Little Death'Friday, 27 March 2020
“Whipped cream with knives” is how Harold Prince, who directed the Broadway premiere of A Little Night Music in 1973, famously described this particular Sondheim show. And nowhere is that borne out with more exquisite agony than in this duet between... Read more... |
Album: Little Dragon - New Me, Same UsSaturday, 21 March 2020
Buried lyrical tremors barely disturb Little Dragon’s blissed electronic R&B, on the former Gothenburg schoolmates’ fifth album. Though forming in 1996, they took another decade to really begin a career which has included collaborations with... Read more... |
Alice Boman, Union Chapel review - Swedish singer-songwriter confounds expectationsThursday, 27 February 2020
Judging by her debut album, Malmö singer-songwriter Alice Boman’s frosted-glass musical aesthetic has the odd hint of Mazzy Star and draws from the sound world created for Twin Peaks – a similar outlook to Gothenburg’s El Perro del Mar. Dream On is... Read more... |
Amon Amarth, O2 Academy Brixton review – London welcomes its new Viking overlordsSaturday, 30 November 2019
“Are you ready to do battle with us?” bellows Johan Hegg, Amon Amarth’s imposing yet cheery frontman, immediately prompting an enthusiastic roar from the packed-out Brixton crowd. “GOOOOOOD!” He’s the most genial Viking you could imagine - six-foot... Read more... |
O/Modernt Soloists, Sonoro Ensemble, Wimbledon International Music Festival review - pure instrumental poetryMonday, 18 November 2019
If you're going to run a music festival with flair, it's not enough just to have a run of star performers who pop up for single events. The 11th Wimbledon International Music Festival can offer those – Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt, for instance... Read more... |
Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild, Series 10, Channel 5 review - living off your wits and below the radar in SwedenWednesday, 30 October 2019
“I think we all dream of simplifying our lives and reconnecting with nature,” reckons Ben Fogle, and since this was the start of the tenth series of this show, he must have struck a chord with viewers. His first subject was 24-year-old Italian woman... Read more... |
CD: Tonbruket - Masters of FogMonday, 30 September 2019
Bassist Dan Berglund was a founding member of the highly influential euro-jazz Esbjörn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.) until the accidental death of Svensson, while diving, in 2008. The first Tonbruket album appeared the following year, with Berglund joined... Read more... |
CD: Tove Lo - Sunshine KittyMonday, 16 September 2019
Swedish singer Tove Lo appeared at a time when female physical sexuality was being used as a raw, blunt weapon in pop, when porno chic reached an apex in music videos. Half a decade ago was the time of Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” and Miley Cyrus’s “... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dalarna: Rhinegold in a Swedish barn by a lakeSaturday, 27 July 2019
Anna Larsson's fellow Swedes can count themselves lucky that the worldwide first choice to sing Wagner's Erda and the midnight song in Mahler's Third Symphony has made so much of her Dalarna inheritance. In what's called a "Concert Barn" (... Read more... |
Midsommar review - hell is other peopleThursday, 04 July 2019
Who would have thought that Ari Aster could top the satanic delights of Hereditary? Yet with Midsommar, a psychedelic twist on folk horror, he has. Aster abandons the supernatural to show that it’s not things that go bump in the night that scare us... Read more... |
