Switzerland
Berlinale 2014: The Circle, Love Is Strange, Land of Storms, Praia do FuturoSunday, 16 February 2014
Back in the 1950s the Zurich underground club Der Kreis was a rare beacon of tolerance of homosexuality in Europe. Fitting then that Swiss director Stefan Haupt’s drama-documentary of the same name, The Circle (****), won this year’s Teddy award at... Read more... |
Paul Klee: Making Visible, Tate ModernTuesday, 15 October 2013
"The objects in pictures look out at us serene or severe, tense or relaxed, comforting or forbidding, suffering or smiling." Thus said Paul Klee (1879-1940) in a lecture on modern art in 1924. It is an entirely accurate description of his own work,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Locarno: All About the Wet BitsSunday, 18 August 2013
Feuchtgebiete has been the talk of Locarno. The word combines “damp” or “moist” with “areas” – yes, you might guess what’s coming. English-born, German-bred Charlotte Roche published in 2008 a novel of the same title, which became Wetlands in... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Verbier: Festival scales new heightsSunday, 04 August 2013
The moment when Alfred Brendel shuffled on stage during the Verbier Festival’s 20th Anniversary Concert not to play, but to turn pages for long-time colleague Emmanuel Ax, expressed everything that is so special, so extraordinary about this festival... Read more... |
10 Questions for Verbier Festival founder Martin EngstroemMonday, 01 July 2013
He might not be a household name, but Martin Engstroem is classical music’s man behind the curtain, a quiet but significant force in the industry for some 40 years. Although his career has seen Engstroem by turns as major artist agent and head of A... Read more... |
Berezovsky, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Järvi, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 25 May 2013
In 1980, an orchestra and conductor then hardly known in Britain came to the Royal Festival Hall. I went to hear Elisabeth Söderström in Strauss’s Four Last Songs; I left stunned by an unorthodox Sibelius Second Symphony and above all by one of the... Read more... |
Der Fliegende Holländer, Zurich Opera, Royal Festival HallSunday, 16 December 2012
Much more regularly than the seven years it takes the Flying Dutchman's demon ship to reach dry land, the Zurich Opera steamer moors at the Southbank Centre. None of its more recent concert performances up to now has branded itself on the memory as... Read more... |
Frankenstein: A Modern Myth, Channel 4Thursday, 01 November 2012
I think Frankenstein should always be pronounced Fronkenshteen, the way Gene Wilder says it in Young Frankenstein. But that would have been far too frivolous for this intermittently interesting but often irritating film about the legacy of Mary... Read more... |
SisterWednesday, 24 October 2012
A tale of life at the foot of the slopes, French-Swiss director Ursula Meier’s follow-up to her likeably askew debut Home finds her once again zeroing in on an unusual domestic set-up. This time the focus is on a dysfunctional family, perilously... Read more... |
Mama Rosin, Jazz CaféSunday, 14 October 2012
For several years now this Swiss trio have been combining their love of old Cajun and Zydeco tunes with an arthouse-meets-punk aesthetic strongly influenced by the Velvet Underground and The Clash. But it’s only with their new album Bye Bye Bayou (... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Locarno: Sunshine Cinema in the AlpsSunday, 12 August 2012
The most radical Locarno ever: it's in the upper 20s Celsius in the southern Alps. The sky is cloudless blue. Moreover, not for one, or two, or three, or four nights in a row, but for FIVE has it not rained in this small resort. Next year no doubt... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Verbier: Flowers, Cows and Musical StarsFriday, 27 July 2012
Can this really be only an afternoon’s travelling away from traffic-choked London? I’m waist-deep in wild blue lupins on a verdant Swiss mountain looking for a concert hall.A cow’s bell nearby is slightly frustrating - beyond the lupins, I guess, is... Read more... |
