Poland
DVD/Blu-ray: Rosa LuxemburgThursday, 31 January 2019
Barbara Sukowa won Best Actress at Cannes in 1986 for her title role in Margarethe von Trotta’s Rosa Luxemburg, and the power of her performance looks every bit as engaging and insistent today. A century after Luxemburg’s death (she was... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Warsaw - Penderecki at 85Wednesday, 28 November 2018
Krzysztof Penderecki is the elder statesman of Polish music, and celebrations for his 85th birthday in Warsaw were suitably grand. Penderecki has been setting the agenda for contemporary music, in Poland and beyond, since the 1950s. His early work... Read more... |
Fialkowska, BBCSO, Nesterowicz, Barbican review – a cliche-free night in PolandSaturday, 03 November 2018
National feeling – in music, as anywhere else – depends on choice, not blood. This BBC Symphony Orchestra concert at the Barbican to mark the centenary of Poland’s rebirth as a nation never felt remotely like a feast of aural jingoism. In fact, its... Read more... |
Olga Tokarczuk: Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead review - on vengeful natureSunday, 09 September 2018
In a small town on the Polish-Czech border where the mobile signal wanders between countries’ operators and only three inhabitants stick it out through the winter, animals are wreaking a terrible revenge. The bodies of murdered men, united in their... Read more... |
Cold War review - a gorgeous and mesmerising romanceWednesday, 29 August 2018
Can we ever really know the passion that brought our parents together? By the time we are old enough to hear the story of how they first met, that lovers’ narrative has frayed in the telling and faded in the daily light of domestic familiarity. But... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Kraków - Easter music with a British focusTuesday, 03 April 2018
Held annually every Holy Week, Kraków’s Misteria Paschalia is one of the continent’s most vibrant early music festivals. With an increasing focus on international collaborations, the 2018 edition welcomed Edinburgh’s Dunedin Consort as artists in... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Katowice - energy and imagination at the Fitelberg Conducting CompetitionTuesday, 28 November 2017
Music competitions are big in Poland. Every five years the classical music world turns its attention to Warsaw for the International Chopin Piano Competition, with much commentary and speculation, and a succession celebrity laureated to maintain its... Read more... |
Han Kang: The White Book review - between what is, what was, what might have beenSunday, 05 November 2017
A woman gives birth alone two months early in a frost-bound village in the Korean countryside. In Poland, a solitary woman washes down white migraine pills and concludes she must write. The child that is born dies. The finished book commemorates her... Read more... |
Cavalleria Rusticana/Trial by Jury, Opera North review - sombre triumph and pale frothThursday, 28 September 2017
Pairing Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury makes for a pleasingly schizoid evening in the latest of Opera North's The Little Greats series. Mascagni’s crashing final chords precede a longish interval, and when... Read more... |
Proms at...Cadogan Hall review: Pavel Kolesnikov - Chopin takes flightTuesday, 29 August 2017
If individual greatness is to be found in the way an artist begins and ends a phrase, or finds magical transitions both within and between pieces, then Pavel Kolesnikov is already up there with the top pianists. Listeners tuning in midway through... Read more... |
Destination Unknown review - Holocaust survivors go backThursday, 15 June 2017
Destination Unknown is a passion project 13 years in production, a documentary featuring moving interviews with a dozen Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution. Elderly men and women describe what happened to them and their families during the war. We... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Gražyna Bacewicz, Stravinsky, Nathan WilliamsonSaturday, 06 May 2017
Gražyna Bacewicz: Chamber Music Diana Ambache and friends (Ambache Recordings)This is an easy disc to love. Gražyna Bacewicz’s music is consistently good, often exceptionally so, and it's gratifying that new recordings on Hyperion and Chandos... Read more... |
