Austria
DVD: AmourTuesday, 12 March 2013
For all the brilliance of its leads – Jean-Louis Trintignant back in the cinema after many years, Emmanuelle Riva cruelly pipped for an Oscar – it’s easily forgotten that Amour is a zeitgeist film. As the First World’s population ages, narratives of... Read more... |
Altitude Festival 2013Wednesday, 20 February 2013
The sixth Altitude Festival takes place on March 18-22. The festival of Alpine comedy started in 2008 when Marcus Brigstocke decided to combine his day job with the family's snowboarding holiday and invited a few of his comedy mates to join him in... Read more... |
Piemontesi, Karnéus, Reiss, Guildhall Symphony Chorus, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, Barbican HallSunday, 02 December 2012
Now the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s second Conductor Laureate, Jiří Bělohlávek was always going to deserve a hero’s welcome for taking his players to the finishing line of their six-year cycle through Mahler’s symphonies. As more superficially... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Perahia, Vienna Philharmonic, HaitinkFriday, 07 September 2012
You’ve never seen so many people at a Prom, thousands of them packed into every space of the Albert Hall inside, while outside a 100-metre line of hopefuls queued in vain to stand in a pit where a small cat couldn’t have been added. But then this... Read more... |
Intermezzo, Buxton FestivalSunday, 08 July 2012
No sooner had the Olympic torch been run out of town than in rushed the cavalcade of opera singers, musicians, actors, dancers and literary talkers for the start of the 34th Buxton Festival. Leading them, so to speak, was Stephen Barlow, the new... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor-Director Karl MarkovicsSunday, 22 April 2012
It’s not so very rare for actors to be given a shot at directing their own film. It happens slightly less often that they find financial backing to work on their own script. What makes Breathing, which opened this week in the UK, such a... Read more... |
BreathingFriday, 20 April 2012
This one sounds like a hard sell: a muted, taciturn, cautious film from Austria about a friendless boy in a young offenders’ institution who takes a job working for the municipal undertakers. Breathing (original title: Atmen) would appear at first... Read more... |
Soap & Skin, ScalaThursday, 12 April 2012
Any shade you want, as long as it’s dark. Songs like “Extinguish Me”, "Deathmental”, “Mr Gaunt Pt 1000” meant last night wasn’t going to be defined by uplifting toe tappers. On album, Soap & Skin’s music is desolate, emotive and turbulent. The... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Falla, Rameau, Nikolaus HarnoncourtSaturday, 31 March 2012
De Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain, The Three-Cornered Hat, Homenajes Jean-Efflaum Bavouzet (piano), Raquel Lojendio (soprano), BBC Philharmonic/Juanjo Mena (Chandos)Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena has recently succeeded Gianandra Noseda... Read more... |
CD: Lonely Drifter Karen – PolesSunday, 25 March 2012
Poles is a significant step for Lonely Drifter Karen. For their third album, the pan-European trio have moved their trademark piano-led, torch song-influenced introspection into new territory. The graceful Poles is a pop album of the very highest... Read more... |
MichaelFriday, 02 March 2012
Michael is a work of fiction, but it is also clearly an amalgam of real-life events. For first-time Austrian director Markus Schleinzer (former casting director for Michael Haneke, whose influence you may detect), the subject must have particular... Read more... |
Symphony, BBC FourFriday, 04 November 2011
Having blazed a trail through choral music, Simon Russell Beale now focuses his attentions on the symphony in this new four-part series. At last able to put aside the mind-games and chicanery of his role as Home Secretary William Towers in Spooks (... Read more... |
