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Currie talks to Aho
Percussion isn’t at the back of the orchestra anymore. It’s at the front. Hitters and scapers from the very top of Britain – the UK’s socio-democratic, straight-talking and weather beaten chunk of would-be Nordic rock – have helped it move there. Scottish percussionist Colin Currie is the heir apparent to Evelyn Glennie. Both have greased ...
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Project Die Frau
You have to conjure another world for Die Frau ohne Schatten. Make that two worlds. Or even three. The empress moves from her vaguely-defined ‘spirit’ realm to that of our ugly but wonderful earth; Strauss creates some of the most dark and shocking music of his career. What draws it from him isn’t obvious, unless ...
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Music from ice
‘How many stars are there? How slowly is it possible for one’s heart to beat? What is man’s role in the grand scheme of things?’ Slithering on my perch, I’m trying my best to ponder these questions. It’s not easy in sub-zero conditions, but then, who said it would be? As the only festival in the ...
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Purge: home discomforts
Purge seems set to continue its success story in 2012. The novel has appeared in at least 38 languages and won countless prizes including the Sunday Times Book of the Year 2010. Last year an eminent Swedish critic tipped its author Sofi Oksanen as a future Nobel Prize winner and last week a Finnish newspaper ...
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Mäntynen: Kalevala in bronze
Velocity is charged through Taru Mäntynen’s bronze figures. They shoot out momentum and fling off emotion. Heavy and rigid in their dense metal, still they appear so fragile and vulnerable. Mäntynen talks of the ‘primal brute strength’ of the Kalevala’s characters, but in her Kullervo I see shyness and pain as well as athletic force. ...
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The Killing, circa 1915
It is, in a sense, the work of a dilettante. William J Harvey’s 1915 survey of Danish life and institutions Denmark and the Danes reads like a travel diary masquerading as a socio-geographical textbook. But where lazy caricature ends, Harvey begins. A century on, he’s vindicated by the telling astuteness of so many of his ...
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Lewerentz: faith in bricks
If Swedish minimalism floats your boat – where decoration is for the unconfident, where every single move holds a secret – sit up. The church of St Peter in Klippan is where it’s at, and Sigurd Lewerentz is king. We are meeting the Swedish architect at the end of his professional life. He is finally ...
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Arctic exhibition
The known knowns of Iceland’s cultural offering are pretty ubiquitous these days: deliciously traditional textiles, vibrant music and nightlife, a provocative moon-like volcanic landscape. But what of Icelandic design and architecture? Don’t the islanders live in mud huts, shower in a geyser and brush their teeth with Brennivín? Is it all wooden benches and fishnet ...
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News from the North
There’s more than a hint of Nordic Noir to the way DR’s refreshed evening news show hits Danish screens. You arrive a few seconds early to an oversize countdown (actually a ‘count-up’) and then boom: TV Avisen shoots across the back wall, big and white against the marble black of the minimalist set. This is ...