Germany
The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testamentTuesday, 13 May 2025
“It is so disgraceful, what happened there,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, in a comment that is the understatement of the century. She is referring to the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was... Read more... |
Riefenstahl review - fascinating fascism? Portrait of the Nazis' favourite film-makerFriday, 09 May 2025
There used to be an unwritten rule among BBC commissioners about how long an interval had to pass before greenlighting a new documentary on a familiar subject – Shakespeare, Ancient Egypt, Andy Warhol – they all came round again with a decent... Read more... |
Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refugeTuesday, 29 April 2025
Mountainish by Zsuzsanna Gahse is a collection of 515 notes, each contributing to an expansive kaleidoscope of mountain encounters. Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire in Prototype’s English-language edition, a narrator travels in the... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: In a Year of 13 MoonsTuesday, 15 April 2025
A longshot of transgender Elvira (Volker Spengler) circled by gay men, assignation turning to assault as dawn mist rises from Frankfurt’s Main river, suggests Pasolini’s brutal 1975 assassination. Rainer Werner Fassbinder instead had in mind the... Read more... |
Bonhoeffer review - flawed biopic of a saintly man of courageSaturday, 08 March 2025
The German theologian, pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a saintly, courageous figure, of major historical significance. Those are good reasons to ensure that his story gets told and becomes better known. At a time... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Kraftwerk - Autobahn at 50Sunday, 02 March 2025
“German space rock group is already shooting up the charts with their debut US LP. One of few continental groups able to make this musical mode attractive in the US.” That, in full, in its 1 March 1975 issue, was US music business paper Billboard’s... Read more... |
German National Orchestra, Marshall, Cadogan Hall review - sheer youthful exuberanceThursday, 16 January 2025
This concert was an effusion of pure joy. Billed as the German National Orchestra, the Bundesjugendorchester (Federal Youth Orchestra), all of whose players are aged from 14 to 19, make a glorious, powerful sound. Just over 100 teenage musicians... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson on 'Rumours'Saturday, 07 December 2024
Somewhere in Germany, G7 conference leaders including German Chancellor Ortmann (Cate Blanchett) and US President Wolcott (Charles Dance) repair to a gazebo to collaborate on a “clear, but not so clear” communique addressing an unnamed, possibly... Read more... |
Bach Brandenburg Concertos, OAE, QEH review - forever youngThursday, 14 November 2024
Victims of their own success in the postwar era of well-recorded sound, the Brandenburg Concertos first arrived in the ears of listeners from my generation via glossy, plush and polished recordings by heavyweight orchestras of a sort that would have... Read more... |
Blond Eckbert, English Touring Opera review - dark deeds afoot in the woodsMonday, 07 October 2024
Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert, presented by English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire, at the beginning of its tour (paired with The Snowmaiden, reviewed on theartsdesk last week) has all the biggest virtues of her work in spades: it is narratively... Read more... |
Prom 62, Mahler's Sixth Symphony, Bavarian RSO, Rattle review - sound over momentumSaturday, 07 September 2024
Mahler’s Sixth is one of those apocalyptic megaliths that shouldn’t be approached too often by audiences or conductors. It’s been a constant in Simon Rattle’s treasury since 1989, when he first recorded it with his City of Birmingham Symphony... Read more... |
Cuckoo review - insane time in the Bavarian AlpsThursday, 22 August 2024
Strange noises fill the crisp nighttime air in a small Alpine village: Avian shrieks and some wild beast a-rustling in the hedgerows – or are those the screams of a desperate woman?Into the strange, scary, funny world of Cuckoo comes a British-... Read more... |
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