Poland
The Passenger, English National OperaTuesday, 20 September 2011
No two creative artists have a stronger right to make a valid statement about Auschwitz than a Polish-born composer who escaped his family's fate by fleeing to Russia, only to fall into another anti-Semitic trap, and a Polish writer whose clear-eyed... Read more... |
DVD: Deep EndFriday, 15 July 2011
Filmed in 1969 by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, the London-set Deep End captures the late-Sixties comedown mood. The lack of swinging trappings, a perverse attitude to sexuality and the dowdy mundanity of its setting make the film... Read more... |
Essential KillingSaturday, 02 April 2011
There are certain film-makers who like to give themselves a headache. Buried confined its only character to a coffin. Phone Booth stuck Colin Farrell in – what else? – a phone booth. Essential Killing imposes another kind of confinement on its main... Read more... |
Skolimowski film reignites Gallo controversy - genius or twat?Friday, 25 March 2011
Kinoteka, the adventurous Polish film festival, opened last night with a gala screening at the Curzon Renoir of veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing, a film that has provoked some vicious responses. The Observer said it was “deeply... Read more... |
Douglas Gordon: K.364Friday, 11 February 2011
After writing about a recent survey of French artist Philippe Parreno at the Serpentine Gallery last year, I found myself wondering about his collaboration with the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. In 2006 the two artists made the acclaimed film... Read more... |
The Portrait, Opera NorthWednesday, 02 February 2011
Based on a short story by Gogol, Alexander Medvedev’s libretto for Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Portrait was originally conceived for Shostakovich. It was subsequently passed to Weinberg, who finished his opera in 1980. It’s a bleak, Faustian tale... Read more... |
Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, Network TheatreSunday, 09 January 2011
I suspect there is a different production waiting to be unveiled for Witold Gombrowicz’s 1938 black comedy Ivona, Princess of Burgundia. Under the arches at Waterloo, tucked beside the station down a dark and dank service road is the Network... Read more... |
Bloody Foreigners: The Untold Battle of Britain, Channel 4Tuesday, 29 June 2010
The part played by Polish fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain has hardly gone undocumented, and the Hun-zapping exploits of the Polish 303 Squadron will be familiar to anyone with a historical interest in the subject, so you’d have to say... Read more... |
Szymanowski Focus, Wigmore HallWednesday, 05 May 2010
Poland's most imaginative composer after Chopin, and his natural heir in the realm of sensual reverie, certainly knew how to yoke a full orchestra to his dreams and fantasies. Yet the work by Szymanowski I've most longed to hear in concert is the... Read more... |
Gorecki singer makes it despite volcanic ashSaturday, 17 April 2010Joanna Wos (left, no relation to Jonathan Ross) put in a stellar performance last night singing in Gorecki's Third Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall with the LPO, singing the part made famous on the million-selling recording by Dawn Upshaw. To... Read more... |
4.48 Psychosis, Barbican TheatreWednesday, 24 March 2010
Sarah Kane’s last play is the stuff of legend. Since its first production some 18 months after her suicide in 1999, it’s become a favourite with black-attired drama students, nostalgic in-yer-face drama buffs and mainstream theatres all over... Read more... |
Krystian Zimerman, RFHTuesday, 23 February 2010
Beware of Zimermania - or, for that matter, of idolising any pianist as the Greatest Living Interpreter of Chopin. Our birthday boy, 200 years old last night (and not on 1 March), as a crucial baptismal register now seems to prove, is too big for... Read more... |
