Sweden
Reissue CDs Weekly: Dungen - StadsvandringarSunday, 20 June 2021
Dungen’s October 2005 appearance on Late Night With Conan O'Brien was incongruous. Here was a Swedish band on an independent label, singing in their native language, playing live on coast-to-coast mainstream US TV. The show’s host making a great... Read more... |
First Person: Director Maria Aberg on drawing fresh inspiration for the futureSaturday, 12 June 2021
When theatres in the UK closed last March, I found myself in a vacuum. Having been a freelance theatre director for over 15 years, I was used to busy – juggling a hectic schedule of directing shows with the reality of being a mum to two toddlers.... Read more... |
Siegfried, Göteborg Opera online review - a hero for our timesMonday, 29 March 2021
The team of Stephen Langridge (director), Alison Chitty (design) and Paul Pyant (lighting) produced a quietly radical Parsifal at the Royal Opera in 2013, finding both beauty and horror in unexpected corners. On the strength of its third instalment... Read more... |
Album: Frida Hyvönen - Dream Of IndependenceSaturday, 20 March 2021
Track two on Dream Of Independence, the new album from Sweden’s Frida Hyvönen, is titled “A Funeral in Banbridge”. An account of attending a funeral in, indeed, Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland, it’s bright, melodically jaunty, piano-... Read more... |
Classical musicians on life after Brexit - 2: violinist Victoria SaylesThursday, 28 January 2021
In March 2020, all my work in Australia and Sweden, where I had won contracts for several months to come, was cancelled on the day I was due to fly. Both organisations who had engaged me promptly honoured their contracts with me financially... Read more... |
Album: Viagra Boys - Welfare JazzSaturday, 09 January 2021
Their PR cannot put the band name in the header of promotional emails, as they’ll go straight to the spam bin, but Swedish punk outfit Viagra Boys have, nonetheless, become a name to contend with. It’s their wild live persona that’s put them on the... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Are We Lost ForeverTuesday, 05 January 2021
The title of Swedish director David Färdmar’s feature debut gains a degree of helpful context from one of its opening lines, “But there’s no more we”. One partner, Hampus (Jonathan Andersson), is telling the other, Adrian (Björn Elgerd), that... Read more... |
Being A Human Person review - enter the surreal world of Roy AnderssonFriday, 16 October 2020
It’s fair to say that the idiosyncratic, surrealist films of Roy Andersson are not everyone’s cup of tea. Whether you find his films impregnable or incisive, it’s impossible to argue with the artistic imprint the Swedish auteur has had on European... Read more... |
A Little Night Music, Opera Holland Park review - wasn't it bliss?Tuesday, 18 August 2020
A lot of rain and untold bliss: those were the takeaways from Saturday night’s alfresco Opera Holland Park concert performance of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s eternally glorious 1973 musical, A Little Night Music. I doubt any of the 200... Read more... |
Don Giovanni/Sibelius plus, Swedish RSO, Harding, livestream review - dark studio ritualsThursday, 18 June 2020
"Touch her and you die," sings Masetto in telling Don Giovanni to keep away from his Zerlina. There's certainly trouble, though not instant death, when fingers briefly meet. Mozart's dark comedy has much in Da Ponte's text about hands-on business... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Korngold, Gabriel Prokofiev, Barbara HanniganSaturday, 30 May 2020
Korngold: Violin Concerto, String Sextet Andrew Haveron (violin), RTÉ Concert Orchestra/John Wilson, Sinfonia of London Chamber Ensemble (Chandos)Erich Korngold began writing his String Sextet in 1914, when he was just 17. Listeners immune to... Read more... |
Classical Music/Opera direct to home 11 - more phased returns to creative workFriday, 15 May 2020
At last, it seems, one venerable British institution will be emulating what Scandinavian and Czech set-ups have been managing over the past month: live performances from an audience-less venue, though in sound only. In quickly reorganised scheduling... Read more... |
