tue 24/12/2024

Switzerland

theartsdesk in Verbier: A Cable Car Named Inspire

I’m standing with my feet on peaks and my head in clouds, looking down steep Alps at the tiny chocolate-brown chalets of little Verbier way below on the green slopes. It’s ravishing up here on the top of Fontanet, and I tarry, gloating over the...

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Forests, Rocks, Torrents: Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes, National Gallery

The National Gallery has in recent years made a speciality of examining the hitherto unexamined. Just for starters, a surprise hit some years ago was Spanish Still Lifes, 2007 saw Renoir Landscapes (who knew?), last year there was the ravishing...

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Bern:Ballett, Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House

'Clara', choreographed by Cathy Marston

Being a choreographer is harder than it looks. Steps, movement, are just the beginning. On top of that you need to have a sense of theatricality, and then, even more, you need to be able to convey your ideas, through movement alone, to the...

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European Festivals 2011 Round-Up

Be different - take a festival break in Europe instead of the UK, and catch a different landscape. While artists in both new music and classical are constantly circling the world in search of more picturesque settings, you can find your alternative...

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Chouf Ouchouf, Queen Elizabeth Hall

'Chouf Ouchouf': Human pyramids are only the start of it

If you’re looking for a surprising and off-the-wall show this school holidays, I’ve no hesitation in hugely recommending Chouf Ouchouf, a brilliantly and theatrically inventive acrobat theatre show performed by the Groupe Acrobatique de Tangier, a...

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CD: Mama Rosin - Black Robert

Mama Rosin: They sound like they’re playing while hanging out of the window of a freight train

What’s not to like about this Swiss trio with an unquenchable love of the most obscure American roots music? As well as having the ability to evoke the spirit of early Cajun and rock’n’roll recordings without resorting to staid academic imitation,...

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theartsdesk in Luxembourg: The Sonic Visions Festival

Luxembourg's musical landscape has few claims to represent the Grand Duchy itself. Most of Luxembourg's Eurovision entries weren't actually from the Duchy, as there was little local music to draw on. So Belgium's cod punk-gone-blando Plastic...

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Michael Jarrell, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff

Michael Jarrell: 'As thrilling and instantaneous as a tidal wave or an avalanche'

Music, Wagner famously pronounced, is the art of transition. For the Swiss composer Michael Jarrell, by contrast, music is “the art of punctuation”. On the one hand, how to get from one thing to the next; on the other hand, how to separate one thing...

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Tune in to Abbado's astounding Lucerne Mahler 9 livestream

You'll just have to take it on trust from me that to hear the world's most responsive orchestra conducted by the world's finest living conductor in the deepest symphony ever written is the one concert hall experience you can't afford to miss. And...

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theartsdesk in Locarno: I'm Watchin' in the Rain

It had to happen. Until now, I've always resisted. But last Thursday, I had, finally, to tear open the plastic container to get to the protection inside. A nice man from Screen International gave me his before leaving - he'd have no use for it...

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theartsdesk in Verbier: Musicians Peak in the Alps

You want to see Yuri Bashmet, arguably the greatest living viola player, but you can't because you've chosen to go to a recital by Yevgeny Kissin, one of the world's top pianists, on the same evening in another hall. Even the option of dashing from...

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Verbier Festival: an Alpine symphony

It becomes increasingly hard for a music festival to stick out from the crowd these days. But high culture, high summer and high altitude create a rousing major chord each July in Verbier, which can genuinely claim to be the only festival you reach...

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