Finland
theartsdesk in Oslo: by:Larm Festival 2011 and the Nordic Music PrizeSunday, 27 February 2011
Oslo’s annual by:Larm festival celebrates Nordic music. Over the three days, just under 180 acts play Norway's capital: 142 are Norwegian, 15 are Swedish, with single figures each for Iceland, Denmark, Finland and even Greenland. Time presses, and... Read more... |
Bryant, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Robertson, Barbican HallFriday, 11 February 2011
Never envy a relatively new voice in music his or her place in a concert shared with Sibelius. Invariably the economical Finnish master will triumph with his ideas and how he streams them in a forward-moving adventure. You sit staring at all the... Read more... |
Zimmermann, LPO, Saraste, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 15 December 2010
If you've just come back from a taxing, tiring orchestral tour, as has the London Philharmonic, the last thing you want to face is a programme of four tough works which demand, at the very least, bright-eyed vigilance but more often a tense, finger-... Read more... |
At home with Jean SibeliusThursday, 25 November 2010
It will remain one of the most unforgettable times of my life - the privilege of spending four hours alone with the curator in the house of Jean Sibelius outside Helsinki, deep in a snowbound March scene.In fact, I just couldn't stop writing about... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Tampere, Finland: At the Lost in Music Festival 2010Sunday, 24 October 2010
The music of Sibelius might speak of Finland, its unpopulated spaces, vast inland lakes, semi-Arctic climate and long, dark nights, but the annual Lost in Music festival brings together a bewildering array of Finnish bands and singers that range... Read more... |
Grimaud, Philharmonia, Salonen, Royal Festival HallThursday, 30 September 2010
Esa-Pekka Salonen and his dauntless band of Philharmonia players have been wrestling with heroes. After a celebration of Wagner's Tristan, the legend-making shifted further north last night. Here was Sibelius first as the plain-singing, well-loved... Read more... |
WOMAD 2010, Charlton ParkTuesday, 27 July 2010
“We all come from the same DNA, as Desmond Tutu is always reminding us, and we shouldn’t be surprised that these musical collaborations take place - and work so well.” That was Peter Gabriel's comment on the music at WOMAD last weekend, a festival... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Helsinki: Sunflowers By the Frozen BalticSunday, 25 April 2010
Venezuela's joyful musical education programme known as El Sistema is the phenomenon of the age, the success story that many western countries now seek to replicate. And that's great. But Britain, for a start, might re-engage its own back-to-basics... Read more... |
Kaija Saariaho's Émilie, Opéra de LyonTuesday, 09 March 2010
The new millennium shimmered into earshot with a musical masterpiece from a female Finn. Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin (2000) appeared to open up an enticing new operatic sound world, less dogmatic, more instinctive, colourful and intense, very... Read more... |
BBCSO, Mälkki, Barbican HallSunday, 31 January 2010
Fashionable concertgoers, if you'll forgive the oxymoron, may have missed the raciest heartbeat of a dizzying week. While Barenboim's Beethoven and Vänskä's Sibelius packed in the cognoscenti at the Royal Festival Hall, kids tagging along to the BBC... Read more... |
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