Dmitri Shostakovich is one of the most acclaimed and respected composers in history.
His music is renowned for its emotional depth, its powerful emotive qualities, and its evocative instrumentation. His works are often considered to be some of the finest examples of classical music in the 20th century. They have been performed by many great orchestras throughout the world, as well as by smaller ensembles and soloists.
This article delves into the life and works of Dmitri Shostakovich, exploring his inspirations, influences and achievements. We will look at his most famous works such as his symphonies, his chamber music and his vocal compositions. Finally, we will discover some interesting facts about this great composer that you may not know.
Life and Music of Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the most influential and acclaimed composers of the 20th century. Born in 1906 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shostakovich was a musical...
His music is renowned for its emotional depth, its powerful emotive qualities, and its evocative instrumentation. His works are often considered to be some of the finest examples of classical music in the 20th century. They have been performed by many great orchestras throughout the world, as well as by smaller ensembles and soloists.
This article delves into the life and works of Dmitri Shostakovich, exploring his inspirations, influences and achievements. We will look at his most famous works such as his symphonies, his chamber music and his vocal compositions. Finally, we will discover some interesting facts about this great composer that you may not know.
Life and Music of Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the most influential and acclaimed composers of the 20th century. Born in 1906 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shostakovich was a musical...
- 3/24/2023
- by Music Martin Cid Magazine
- Martin Cid Music
The USA Network hacking thriller "Mr. Robot" is one of the best and most underrated dramas of the past decade. Initially, "Mr. Robot" seemed like a risky project. While writer-director Sam Esmail established his merits as a creator with his highly underrated feature film directorial debut, "Comet," he had yet to prove himself as the showrunner of a complex narrative series. Rami Malek was rising star thanks to his role on HBO's "The Pacific," but the character of Elliot Alderson was very different from anything that he had done before.
All of these concerns evaporated after the first season reached its conclusion. With its stylistic direction, relevant social themes, electrifying soundtrack, and shocking twists, "Mr. Robot" was unlike anything else on television. It seems closer to an arthouse film than anything. The show contains allusions to such classics as "Blade Runner," "The Matrix," "Pi," and "Taxi Driver." "Mr. Robot" continued...
All of these concerns evaporated after the first season reached its conclusion. With its stylistic direction, relevant social themes, electrifying soundtrack, and shocking twists, "Mr. Robot" was unlike anything else on television. It seems closer to an arthouse film than anything. The show contains allusions to such classics as "Blade Runner," "The Matrix," "Pi," and "Taxi Driver." "Mr. Robot" continued...
- 9/5/2022
- by Liam Gaughan
- Slash Film
The origins of electronic music in cinema go back to the first half of the 20th century. This mix is a homage to some of those moments.It begins with a 1930s Pathé archive example of an early version of what would become a synthesizer, before moving into Dmitri Shostakovich’s first use of theremin on screen in the 1931’s Alone, directed by Grigori Kozintsev. Originally a silent film, Alone gained a soundtrack by Shostakovich just before release once film sound was made available in Russia. Bernard Herrmann’s iconic use of the theremin in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) has a wonderful moment in this mix wherein we hear the studio sketches of this score’s creation. Taken from the 2018 reissue of the score, this recording presents studio outtakes and rehearsal moments during the production. Herrmann can be heard in the background prompting different actions from his orchestra.
- 3/28/2022
- MUBI
English-language film will make use of new material about composer’s turbulent private life.
London-based producer David P Kelly has come on board as the UK partner on Alexey Uchitel’s new feature about Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, to be made as a Russia-uk co-production.
The film will make use of new material that has come to light from the composer’s widow about his turbulent private life.
Written by Alexander Terekhov, the English-language project follows the untold aspects of the composer’s life and works.
Rock Films is the Russian partner, and has finalised a co-production agreement with Kelly’s David P Kelly Films,...
London-based producer David P Kelly has come on board as the UK partner on Alexey Uchitel’s new feature about Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, to be made as a Russia-uk co-production.
The film will make use of new material that has come to light from the composer’s widow about his turbulent private life.
Written by Alexander Terekhov, the English-language project follows the untold aspects of the composer’s life and works.
Rock Films is the Russian partner, and has finalised a co-production agreement with Kelly’s David P Kelly Films,...
- 7/11/2021
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
The 2020 ceremony will be streamed online from Berlin.
The European Film Awards has selected the four animation nominees for its 2020 online edition.
They are Rémy Chayé’s Calamity, A Childhood Of Martha Jane Cannary (Fr-Den); Aurel’s Josep (Fr-Bel-Sp); Sergio Pablos’ Klaus (Sp), and Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s The Nose Or The Conspiracy Of Mavericks (Rus).
Chayé’s Calamity, A Childhood Of Martha Jane Cannary depicts a young girl in the American Wild West in 1863 who is forced to grow up quickly and take care of her family. The film won the Cristal for best feature at Annecy Animation Festival in June.
The European Film Awards has selected the four animation nominees for its 2020 online edition.
They are Rémy Chayé’s Calamity, A Childhood Of Martha Jane Cannary (Fr-Den); Aurel’s Josep (Fr-Bel-Sp); Sergio Pablos’ Klaus (Sp), and Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s The Nose Or The Conspiracy Of Mavericks (Rus).
Chayé’s Calamity, A Childhood Of Martha Jane Cannary depicts a young girl in the American Wild West in 1863 who is forced to grow up quickly and take care of her family. The film won the Cristal for best feature at Annecy Animation Festival in June.
- 10/20/2020
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Above: The Long RoadIf there is anything to be learned from film history, it might be how fragile history really is, how easily it is changed, erased and can be constructed to disempower. Fragility in relation to history, memory, and time is one of the main reoccurring themes within the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s program “The Tyger Burns.” By curating a program that only featured new work of filmmakers who were already active by the time the Rotterdam festival started in the 1970s, Iffr programmer Gerwin Tamsma and guest programmer Olaf Möller brought an exceptional ode to the figure and the gaze of the old director this year. The importance of a program such as “The Tyger Burns” cannot be easily overestimated within our current festival climate and it makes quite a radical and necessary statement. Our contemporary film and festival industry is predominantly preoccupied with discovering and cherishing youth.
- 2/18/2020
- MUBI
Sir Ben Kingsley has built a career on real-life portrayals, from his Oscar-winning role in “Gandhi” to lauded composer Dmitri Shostakovich in “Testimony.” However, it’s his work in projects related to the Holocaust and World War II that may resonate the most, including playing Anne Frank’s father in a 2001 miniseries, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in 1989’s “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story,” and perhaps most notably, Oskar Schindler’s accountant Itzhak Stern in Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List.”
Kingsley’s obvious depth of feeling for those parts make it striking that his latest role puts him literally on the wrong side of history. Chris Weitz’s “Operation Finale” dramatizes the 1960 operation to bring former SS officer and unrepentant Nazi Adolf Eichmann (Kingsley) to justice following his years-long escape to Argentina. He’s a twisted, terrifying figure, and even Kingsley didn’t relish the work, but he...
Kingsley’s obvious depth of feeling for those parts make it striking that his latest role puts him literally on the wrong side of history. Chris Weitz’s “Operation Finale” dramatizes the 1960 operation to bring former SS officer and unrepentant Nazi Adolf Eichmann (Kingsley) to justice following his years-long escape to Argentina. He’s a twisted, terrifying figure, and even Kingsley didn’t relish the work, but he...
- 8/29/2018
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Rising British star Florence Pugh electrifies as a teenage bride stuck in a suffocating marriage in William Oldroyd’s heady feature debut
The Russian author Nikolai Leskov’s lurid Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was first published in Dostoevsky’s Epoch magazine in 1865, and has inspired varied adaptations ranging from a 1934 Russian opera by Shostakovich to Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s 1962 film Siberian Lady Macbeth. This latest incarnation transfers the twisted passions of the source material to the rugged landscapes of Victorian-era north-east England, where repression and rebellion conjoin in a heady cocktail of lust, intrigue and murder. In the process, Lady Macbeth both cements rising star Florence Pugh’s deserved reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting screen talents and announces theatre graduate William Oldroyd as a film director of immense promise.
Written with razor-sharp wit by playwright Alice Birch (also making her feature debut), the...
The Russian author Nikolai Leskov’s lurid Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was first published in Dostoevsky’s Epoch magazine in 1865, and has inspired varied adaptations ranging from a 1934 Russian opera by Shostakovich to Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s 1962 film Siberian Lady Macbeth. This latest incarnation transfers the twisted passions of the source material to the rugged landscapes of Victorian-era north-east England, where repression and rebellion conjoin in a heady cocktail of lust, intrigue and murder. In the process, Lady Macbeth both cements rising star Florence Pugh’s deserved reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting screen talents and announces theatre graduate William Oldroyd as a film director of immense promise.
Written with razor-sharp wit by playwright Alice Birch (also making her feature debut), the...
- 4/30/2017
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
By strange and fortuitous coincidence, my meeting with Jack Garfein fell upon the nexus of several intersecting moments in history. It was Friday, January 27th — International Holocaust Remembrance Day. One week earlier, Donald J. Trump was sworn to office as forty-fifth President of the United States; and in the ensuing weekend, allegations of Trump’s unpunished sexual misconduct, callous attitudes toward women and courting of radical right-wing supporters helped bring about the Women’s March on Washington, one of the largest mass protests in the nation’s history. All around, people are anxiously reading the past with tenuous hopes and fears for the future. History, so often a thing defined after the fact, is currently in violent and furious motion.
Jack Garfein is living history, and he’s not shy about telling it. Born to Ukrainian Jews in 1930, Mr. Garfein personally witnessed as a child the rise of Nazi Germany...
Jack Garfein is living history, and he’s not shy about telling it. Born to Ukrainian Jews in 1930, Mr. Garfein personally witnessed as a child the rise of Nazi Germany...
- 3/20/2017
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Already established as a theatre director, the former theology student now makes his feature film debut with a Lady Macbeth that has nothing to do with the Bard
• Click here to see the Observer’s rising stars of 2017 in full
As a theatre director, William Oldroyd has done his share of Shakespeare. But his film-making debut, Lady Macbeth, out this spring, has nothing to do with the Bard. Featuring a mesmeric lead performance by Florence Pugh – the discovery of Carol Morley’s film The Falling – it’s the 19th-century story of Katherine, a young married woman in the north of England who frees herself from the shackles of patriarchy in the most drastic way. Written by playwright Alice Birch, it’s adapted from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, an 1860s Russian novel by Nikolai Leskov, which also inspired an opera by Shostakovich.
The book is almost forgotten today but Oldroyd says: “It’s a cracking read.
• Click here to see the Observer’s rising stars of 2017 in full
As a theatre director, William Oldroyd has done his share of Shakespeare. But his film-making debut, Lady Macbeth, out this spring, has nothing to do with the Bard. Featuring a mesmeric lead performance by Florence Pugh – the discovery of Carol Morley’s film The Falling – it’s the 19th-century story of Katherine, a young married woman in the north of England who frees herself from the shackles of patriarchy in the most drastic way. Written by playwright Alice Birch, it’s adapted from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, an 1860s Russian novel by Nikolai Leskov, which also inspired an opera by Shostakovich.
The book is almost forgotten today but Oldroyd says: “It’s a cracking read.
- 1/1/2017
- by Jonathan Romney
- The Guardian - Film News
About the hour:
Collectors can be a weird bunch. Just ask any of us. Add love of films off the beaten path and you’ve got a concoction that can be hard to understand even by the most supportive in our lives. It doesn’t help that so much media treats collectors of all stripes as dangerous loners just out to get their latest widget for the secret collection behind the trap door in the basement. The sole purpose of this podcast is to try and right those wrong perceptions to those that will listen, but that doesn’t mean we can’t poke fun at ourselves a fair amount as well.
But after we make a little fun, then we are right back to the obsessing of details like formats and restorations and packaging. Yes, packaging. That is where The Completionist turns his jaundiced eye for this latest go-round of Cc minutia.
Collectors can be a weird bunch. Just ask any of us. Add love of films off the beaten path and you’ve got a concoction that can be hard to understand even by the most supportive in our lives. It doesn’t help that so much media treats collectors of all stripes as dangerous loners just out to get their latest widget for the secret collection behind the trap door in the basement. The sole purpose of this podcast is to try and right those wrong perceptions to those that will listen, but that doesn’t mean we can’t poke fun at ourselves a fair amount as well.
But after we make a little fun, then we are right back to the obsessing of details like formats and restorations and packaging. Yes, packaging. That is where The Completionist turns his jaundiced eye for this latest go-round of Cc minutia.
- 12/12/2016
- by Keith Enright
- CriterionCast
Many consider Dmitri Shostakovich the greatest composer of the 20th century. Born September 25, 1906, he might not have lived past his teens if he hadn't been talented. During the famines of the Revolutionary period in Russia, Alexander Glazunov, director of the Petrograd (later Leningrad) Conservatory, arranged for the poor and malnourished Shostakovich's food ration to be increased. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, his graduation exercise for Maximilian Steinberg's composition course at the Conservatory, was completed in 1925 at age 19 and was an immediate success worldwide. He was The Party's poster boy; his Second and Third Symphonies unabashedly subtitled, respectively, "To October". (celebrating the Revolution) and "The First of May". (International Workers' Day).
His highly emotional harmonic language is simultaneously tough yet communicative, but his expansion of Mahlerian symphonic structure, dissonances, sardonic irony, and dark moods eventually clashed with the conservative edicts of Communist Party officials. In 1936 he was viciously denounced by Pravda...
His highly emotional harmonic language is simultaneously tough yet communicative, but his expansion of Mahlerian symphonic structure, dissonances, sardonic irony, and dark moods eventually clashed with the conservative edicts of Communist Party officials. In 1936 he was viciously denounced by Pravda...
- 9/26/2016
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
As I struggled, as every year, to get my end-of-year lists finished in a reasonably timely fashion, it occurred to me that I could publish half of the classical list earlier if I could find a reasonable way to split it into categories. Thus the non-contemporary/contemporary divide this year. The newer composers' work requires more listening; that's the only reason the older repertoire comes first.
1. Ivan Moravec Twelfth Night Recital Prague 1987 (Supraphon) Supposedly this release of a previously unissued concert recording was approved by the pianist shortly before his passing in July 2015. Certainly it's hard to hear anything of significance that he wouldn't have liked about it, because it is a magnificent testament to everything that made him one of the greatest pianists who ever lived: one of the most beautiful piano tones ever heard, allied to liquid phrasing that gave him one of the greatest legato touches ever recorded.
1. Ivan Moravec Twelfth Night Recital Prague 1987 (Supraphon) Supposedly this release of a previously unissued concert recording was approved by the pianist shortly before his passing in July 2015. Certainly it's hard to hear anything of significance that he wouldn't have liked about it, because it is a magnificent testament to everything that made him one of the greatest pianists who ever lived: one of the most beautiful piano tones ever heard, allied to liquid phrasing that gave him one of the greatest legato touches ever recorded.
- 1/6/2016
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
This week, Vulture will be publishing our critics' year-end lists. 1. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Metropolitan Opera The Met had a rough year: the threat of a strike, conflict over the allegedly terrorist-loving The Death of Klinghoffer, and a nauseating deficit ($22 million!). But once the curtain goes up, such trivial problems fade in favor of much worse ones, like those playing out in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. In Graham Vick’s long-absent vintage production, the soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek made killing your husband, banging his employee, poisoning his father, and going on a death march to Siberia into a hugely entertaining evening.2. St. Matthew Passion, Peter Sellars and the Berlin Philharmonic Sellars reconfigured both the Park Avenue Armory and Bach’s oratorio, performing the piece in the round and bringing out the intimate human currents in a monumental, scriptural score. Led by Simon Rattle, it was also terrific theater. 3. Salome,...
- 12/11/2014
- by Justin Davidson
- Vulture
Redmayne lauded for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
Belgian director Gust van den Berghe’s Lucifer was presented with the Grand Prix – including a €10,000 grant from the City of Tallinn - at the 18th edition of the Black Nights Film Festival (Nov 14-30) at the weekend.
This is the first year that Tallinn’s International Competition was held with Black Nights now operating as a Fiapf-designated non-specialised competitive festival.
Van den Berghe’s third feature had its world premiere in Rome’s Cinema d’Oggi competition at the Rome Film Festival in October and is being handled internationally by the Paris/Mexico-based sales company Ndm.
The International Jury including Finnish actress Kati Outinen and film-makers Andrei Proshkin (Russia) and Tomasz Wasilewski (Poland) awarded the prize for Best Cinematographer to Erik Põllumaa for his work on Estonian film-maker Martti Helde’s In The Crosswind and for Best Director to Kyrgyzstan’s Marat Sarulu for Move...
Belgian director Gust van den Berghe’s Lucifer was presented with the Grand Prix – including a €10,000 grant from the City of Tallinn - at the 18th edition of the Black Nights Film Festival (Nov 14-30) at the weekend.
This is the first year that Tallinn’s International Competition was held with Black Nights now operating as a Fiapf-designated non-specialised competitive festival.
Van den Berghe’s third feature had its world premiere in Rome’s Cinema d’Oggi competition at the Rome Film Festival in October and is being handled internationally by the Paris/Mexico-based sales company Ndm.
The International Jury including Finnish actress Kati Outinen and film-makers Andrei Proshkin (Russia) and Tomasz Wasilewski (Poland) awarded the prize for Best Cinematographer to Erik Põllumaa for his work on Estonian film-maker Martti Helde’s In The Crosswind and for Best Director to Kyrgyzstan’s Marat Sarulu for Move...
- 12/1/2014
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
Other prizes included a Best Actor prize for Eddie Redmayne for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
Belgian director Gust van den Berghe’s Lucifer was presented with the Grand Prix – including a €10,000 grant from the City of Tallinn - at the 18th edition of the Black Nights Film Festival (Nov 14-30) at the weekend.
This is the first year that Tallinn’s International Competition was held with Black Nights now operating as a Fiapf-designated non-specialised competitive festival.
Van den Berghe’s third feature had its world premiere in Rome’s Cinema d’Oggi competition at the Rome Film Festival in October and is being handled internationally by the Paris/Mexico-based sales company Ndm.
The International Jury including Finnish actress Kati Outinen and film-makers Andrei Proshkin (Russia) and Tomasz Wasilewski (Poland) awarded the prize for Best Cinematographer to Erik Põllumaa for his work on Estonian film-maker Martti Helde’s In The Crosswind and for...
Belgian director Gust van den Berghe’s Lucifer was presented with the Grand Prix – including a €10,000 grant from the City of Tallinn - at the 18th edition of the Black Nights Film Festival (Nov 14-30) at the weekend.
This is the first year that Tallinn’s International Competition was held with Black Nights now operating as a Fiapf-designated non-specialised competitive festival.
Van den Berghe’s third feature had its world premiere in Rome’s Cinema d’Oggi competition at the Rome Film Festival in October and is being handled internationally by the Paris/Mexico-based sales company Ndm.
The International Jury including Finnish actress Kati Outinen and film-makers Andrei Proshkin (Russia) and Tomasz Wasilewski (Poland) awarded the prize for Best Cinematographer to Erik Põllumaa for his work on Estonian film-maker Martti Helde’s In The Crosswind and for...
- 12/1/2014
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
Does the Metropolitan Opera not know when it has a winner? Graham Vick’s 1994 production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, one of the 20th century’s greatest operas, has spent the past 20 years in mothballs, except for a brief airing-out in 2000. Now it’s finally rocketed out of storage in a phosphorescent burst. And yet with an infectious apathy usually reserved for duds, the company has allotted only five more performances and omitted the opera from the HD broadcast season. The message from the Met is clear: You can skip this one. Well, you shouldn't.Defying all who have been misled into thinking that opera is a delicate or decorous genre, Shostakovich wrote a work that revels in raunchy vulgarity. Stalin loathed it for exactly that reason, but we’re tougher than he was. We can delight in this scorching, sweaty, and brutally entertaining show. It also contains two elegantly composed murders,...
- 11/12/2014
- by Justin Davidson
- Vulture
I used to work at a store where some of us employees liked to dress up for Halloween. One year the young woman I worked with that day dressed in her full Goth regalia (this is someone with a spiderweb tattoo), and when one customer said to her, "I love your costume," she replied, coldly and seriously, "It's not a costume." Ever since then I have thought of Halloween as the one day each year when Goths "fit in."
From whence does "Goth" come as a description of this subculture? Not from the original Goths, Germanic barbarians who sacked Rome and later founded the kingdom that eventually became Spain and Portugal. Rather, it comes from "Gothic fiction," an English literary movement (so called in reference to the architecture of castles) that dates from Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.
Such famed literature as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,...
From whence does "Goth" come as a description of this subculture? Not from the original Goths, Germanic barbarians who sacked Rome and later founded the kingdom that eventually became Spain and Portugal. Rather, it comes from "Gothic fiction," an English literary movement (so called in reference to the architecture of castles) that dates from Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.
Such famed literature as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,...
- 10/31/2014
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Exclusive: German outfit readies Hoffman, Plummer, Chelsom films, preps Us tie-up.
German production outfit Egoli Tossell Film and parent company Film House Germany, is in Cannes talking to investors about an impressive slate of projects in addition to market announcement Ivanhoe, the ambitious adventure film they are producing with Thunder Road founder Basil Iwanyk.
“We will have some exciting cast on Ivanhoe, including some big British talent,” Egoli Tossell’s Jens Meurer told Screen.
“The second major project we’re talking to investors about is English-language epic The Symphony,” continued The Last Station producer, in town with Film House’s Christian Angermayer.
Michael Hoffman, whom Egoli Tossell collaborated with on The Last Station, is newly attached to direct the film and will be in Cannes to discuss the film with investors.
Based on the true story of the daring performance of Dmitry Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony during the 900-day siege of the city by Nazi troops, Egoli...
German production outfit Egoli Tossell Film and parent company Film House Germany, is in Cannes talking to investors about an impressive slate of projects in addition to market announcement Ivanhoe, the ambitious adventure film they are producing with Thunder Road founder Basil Iwanyk.
“We will have some exciting cast on Ivanhoe, including some big British talent,” Egoli Tossell’s Jens Meurer told Screen.
“The second major project we’re talking to investors about is English-language epic The Symphony,” continued The Last Station producer, in town with Film House’s Christian Angermayer.
Michael Hoffman, whom Egoli Tossell collaborated with on The Last Station, is newly attached to direct the film and will be in Cannes to discuss the film with investors.
Based on the true story of the daring performance of Dmitry Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony during the 900-day siege of the city by Nazi troops, Egoli...
- 5/21/2014
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
★★★★☆Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich once described football as "the ballet of the masses". In Corneliu Porumboiu's minimalist documentary The Second Game (2014), we watch a recording of an intense local derby between Romania's two largest teams (Steaua and Dinamo Bucharest) played in the winter of 1988 - a time when the backpass was still permitted, and the violent overthrow and execution of longtime Romanian president Nicolae Ceaușescu was on the horizon. In the 1980s Romanian football was enjoying a golden age (Steaua had won the European Cup and the national league in previous seasons).
- 2/14/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Theatrical hell-raisers and the art world's enfants terribles take centre stage in our roundup of the biggest risk-takers of 2014
Theatre
Oh! What a Lovely War
Theatre-maker Joan Littlewood was a visionary, an iconoclast and a subversive. Her 1963 "documentary collage" about the bitter ironies of the first world war was way ahead of its time, using popular period song and hard-hitting testimony. Lyn Gardner Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15 (020-8534 0310), 1 February to 15 May.
Macbeth
Shakespeare's dark tale as you've never seen it before, taking place in a secret location from dawn to dusk. Party with Duncan, bed down in Macbeth's castle on the 27th floor of a tower block, glimpse the witches in an underground car park, and join the feast at which Banquo will be an uninvited guest. The spectres will be bloody – but the food will be vegetarian. LG Secret location, London, 4 April to 31 May.
Grit
This...
Theatre
Oh! What a Lovely War
Theatre-maker Joan Littlewood was a visionary, an iconoclast and a subversive. Her 1963 "documentary collage" about the bitter ironies of the first world war was way ahead of its time, using popular period song and hard-hitting testimony. Lyn Gardner Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15 (020-8534 0310), 1 February to 15 May.
Macbeth
Shakespeare's dark tale as you've never seen it before, taking place in a secret location from dawn to dusk. Party with Duncan, bed down in Macbeth's castle on the 27th floor of a tower block, glimpse the witches in an underground car park, and join the feast at which Banquo will be an uninvited guest. The spectres will be bloody – but the food will be vegetarian. LG Secret location, London, 4 April to 31 May.
Grit
This...
- 1/1/2014
- by Lyn Gardner, Andrew Dickson, Jonathan Jones, Adrian Searle, Imogen Tilden, Andrew Clements, Tom Service, Mark Lawson, Tim Jonze, Brian Logan, Oliver Wainwright, Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Henry Barnes, Judith Mackrell
- The Guardian - Film News
Hi everyone, Tim here. Those who know me in my other life at Antagony & Ecstasy are well aware of my affection for animation in its many forms, and starting this week, that’s going to be carried over here to the Film Experience. Officially, as of now, this space will be home to a weekly column about the current world of animation with, I suspect, regular guest appearances from classics of both American and international animated cinema.
And there's some pretty exciting news to kick things off. Right on the heels of the announcement of the 19 films submitted for consideration this year in the feature category, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the ten-film list of titles that will be competing for the Best Animated Short Oscar. It feels a little bit like a course correction after last year, which saw two major studio releases hit...
And there's some pretty exciting news to kick things off. Right on the heels of the announcement of the 19 films submitted for consideration this year in the feature category, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the ten-film list of titles that will be competing for the Best Animated Short Oscar. It feels a little bit like a course correction after last year, which saw two major studio releases hit...
- 11/8/2013
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
A scene from Room on the BroomPhoto: Magic Light Pictures Ltd. Today the Academy announced the shortlist of ten animated short films that will be competing for nominations at the 2014 Oscars and I have gone ahead and found trailers/previews for seven of them, the complete short film for one of them and pictures for the two that didn't seem to have any video preview online as of yet. The Academy's Short Films and Feature Animation Branch Reviewing Committee viewed all 56 eligible entries for the preliminary round of voting at screenings held in New York and Los Angeles and now the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch members will select three to five nominees from among the 10 titles previewed below. The 86th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 16, 2014, at 5:30 a.m. Pt. Check out the titles contending for this year's race over the next couple of pages.
- 11/7/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Striking Russian opera singer and wife of Mstislav Rostropovich, she was made an 'unperson' during the Soviet era
The soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, who has died aged 86, coloured her performances of opera, and especially of Russian song, so beautifully that full comprehension was not essential for enjoyment. Of course, once you did understand the words, you realised how much meaning she brought to them.
Possessed of a striking physical presence with lustrous dark hair, she was such a natural actor that she became the star of her generation at the Bolshoi opera company in Moscow, forging artistic relationships with the stage director Boris Pokrovsky and the conductor Alexander Melik-Pashaev. And – appropriately for a performer who sang with all the skill of an instrumentalist – for more than half a century she was married to Mstislav Rostropovich, not just a great cellist, but also a considerable conductor and pianist.
Their marriage – her third...
The soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, who has died aged 86, coloured her performances of opera, and especially of Russian song, so beautifully that full comprehension was not essential for enjoyment. Of course, once you did understand the words, you realised how much meaning she brought to them.
Possessed of a striking physical presence with lustrous dark hair, she was such a natural actor that she became the star of her generation at the Bolshoi opera company in Moscow, forging artistic relationships with the stage director Boris Pokrovsky and the conductor Alexander Melik-Pashaev. And – appropriately for a performer who sang with all the skill of an instrumentalist – for more than half a century she was married to Mstislav Rostropovich, not just a great cellist, but also a considerable conductor and pianist.
Their marriage – her third...
- 12/11/2012
- by Tully Potter
- The Guardian - Film News
Moscow, Nov 4: Chinese composer and conductor Tan Dun has received the Shostakovich Award named after Russian musician Dmitri Shostakovich.
Tan, an iconic Chinese musician, said he was "honoured and touched". He said he got familiar with Shostakovich's works at an early age and held him in high regard.
"There is no territory in the world of music. On this common platform, we could connect past with future, share ideas and thoughts, dig into inner self and pursue our dreams," Xinhua quoted Tan as saying after receiving the award Saturday in Moscow.
Tan,.
Tan, an iconic Chinese musician, said he was "honoured and touched". He said he got familiar with Shostakovich's works at an early age and held him in high regard.
"There is no territory in the world of music. On this common platform, we could connect past with future, share ideas and thoughts, dig into inner self and pursue our dreams," Xinhua quoted Tan as saying after receiving the award Saturday in Moscow.
Tan,.
- 11/4/2012
- by Arun Pandit
- RealBollywood.com
Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D minor is his longest, a six-movement ode to Nature and the World. It includes a children's choir and a contralto soloist but is largely instrumental, using a quite large orchestra complete with posthorn, harps, English horn, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, bass trombones, and a lot more brass than usual. Mahler's nature is not exclusively a calm pastoral scene -- it's stormy, uneasy, sometimes threatening, with mysterious rustling and twittering, yet with rays of sunlight cutting through the shadows at times.
This work had a long and confusing path from conception to completion. Mahler wrote movements II through VI in the summer of 1895. The following year, he worked on a first movement, weaving in elements of the movements he’d written in '95. That movement kept growing and growing -- at least a half an hour long, by itself it as long as all of Beethoven's First Symphony.
This work had a long and confusing path from conception to completion. Mahler wrote movements II through VI in the summer of 1895. The following year, he worked on a first movement, weaving in elements of the movements he’d written in '95. That movement kept growing and growing -- at least a half an hour long, by itself it as long as all of Beethoven's First Symphony.
- 6/10/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Sparks could fly upon the release of Michael Haneke's hugely political Amour, while Prometheus director Ridley Scott also appears to be getting something off his chest
Amour is in the air
Michael Haneke's Cannes-winning Amour will be released in the UK on 16 November. One can thus expect it will be accorded a prime berth at the London film festival. The film, which he wrote in German before getting it translated into French with the approval of his actors, will officially be called Amour around the world. I reckon Jean-Louis Trintignant (the film's title was actually his suggestion) could get an Oscar nomination – he's such a screen legend and Hollywood loves a revival story. The fact that Jean Dujardin won this year will most likely impede his chances of winning, however. Although there is another issue: Cannes audiences have loved the film, yet nobody has yet revealed that there's...
Amour is in the air
Michael Haneke's Cannes-winning Amour will be released in the UK on 16 November. One can thus expect it will be accorded a prime berth at the London film festival. The film, which he wrote in German before getting it translated into French with the approval of his actors, will officially be called Amour around the world. I reckon Jean-Louis Trintignant (the film's title was actually his suggestion) could get an Oscar nomination – he's such a screen legend and Hollywood loves a revival story. The fact that Jean Dujardin won this year will most likely impede his chances of winning, however. Although there is another issue: Cannes audiences have loved the film, yet nobody has yet revealed that there's...
- 6/2/2012
- by Jason Solomons
- The Guardian - Film News
He is the great Russian director who once shot a whole film in a single take. Aleksandr Sokurov talks to Steve Rose about Soviet spies, fallen dictators – and how he got Putin to fund his latest work
At the end of a challenging conversation that, conducted via a translator, strains my intellectual faculties to their limit but barely flexes his, Aleksandr Sokurov makes an astounding statement. "I'm a very literary person, not so much a cinematographic person. I don't really like cinema very much."
Pardon? He doesn't like cinema very much? That's like hearing David Attenborough say he's never really liked animals. Here is a man who was persecuted by the communists for his films; the man who gave us a miraculous feature conducted in one single, unbroken shot, 2002's Russian Ark; the man who is the custodian of Russia's great cinematic heritage. What would he have done if he did like cinema?...
At the end of a challenging conversation that, conducted via a translator, strains my intellectual faculties to their limit but barely flexes his, Aleksandr Sokurov makes an astounding statement. "I'm a very literary person, not so much a cinematographic person. I don't really like cinema very much."
Pardon? He doesn't like cinema very much? That's like hearing David Attenborough say he's never really liked animals. Here is a man who was persecuted by the communists for his films; the man who gave us a miraculous feature conducted in one single, unbroken shot, 2002's Russian Ark; the man who is the custodian of Russia's great cinematic heritage. What would he have done if he did like cinema?...
- 11/15/2011
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Bond, Batman and Titanic can explain the workings of the world, reckons Slavoj Žižek. Danny Leigh joins the superstar philosopher on the set of his latest bizarre voyage into cinema
Slavoj Žižek is in bed. He's wearing cheap pyjamas in a porridgy shade of grey. He looks exactly like the photographs I've seen of him: fag-ash beard, ghostly complexion. I loom over him, and he glowers back. His face is just inches from mine, so close I can feel his breath.
"No, you are wrong!" he hisses. "My dreams were not really mine! That's why I wanted to be reborn!"
None of this is a product of my subconscious. In fact, we're at a studio near Dublin, working on The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, a film in which the Marxist provocateur and bestselling philosopher is starring as himself, albeit in a series of loving re-creations of movie scenes. What's being...
Slavoj Žižek is in bed. He's wearing cheap pyjamas in a porridgy shade of grey. He looks exactly like the photographs I've seen of him: fag-ash beard, ghostly complexion. I loom over him, and he glowers back. His face is just inches from mine, so close I can feel his breath.
"No, you are wrong!" he hisses. "My dreams were not really mine! That's why I wanted to be reborn!"
None of this is a product of my subconscious. In fact, we're at a studio near Dublin, working on The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, a film in which the Marxist provocateur and bestselling philosopher is starring as himself, albeit in a series of loving re-creations of movie scenes. What's being...
- 10/18/2011
- by Danny Leigh
- The Guardian - Film News
(Grigori Kozintsev, 1964/ 1971, PG, Mr Bongo Films)
Grigori Kozintsev (1905-1973) was a prominent figure in Soviet cinema from his late teens until his death, making ambitious political films until after the second world war when he turned to literary adaptations, concluding with his classic versions of Hamlet and King Lear. Both were shot in black-and-white and widescreen on austere Estonian locations beside the Baltic using Boris Pasternak's translations (with Shakespeare's text as subtitles) and music by Shostakovich, and they're based on years of thought and study as revealed in Kozintsev's book Shakespeare: Time and Conscience. The great Russian actor Innokenti Smoktunovsky is a forceful, sane, sensitive Hamlet trapped in a prison of political intrigue, and the film, set in a Tudor Denmark, is vigorous, intelligent and visually stunning. Lear is played by the Estonian actor Jüri Järvet (dubbed into Russian) and is truly old, mad and heartbreaking, and the picture...
Grigori Kozintsev (1905-1973) was a prominent figure in Soviet cinema from his late teens until his death, making ambitious political films until after the second world war when he turned to literary adaptations, concluding with his classic versions of Hamlet and King Lear. Both were shot in black-and-white and widescreen on austere Estonian locations beside the Baltic using Boris Pasternak's translations (with Shakespeare's text as subtitles) and music by Shostakovich, and they're based on years of thought and study as revealed in Kozintsev's book Shakespeare: Time and Conscience. The great Russian actor Innokenti Smoktunovsky is a forceful, sane, sensitive Hamlet trapped in a prison of political intrigue, and the film, set in a Tudor Denmark, is vigorous, intelligent and visually stunning. Lear is played by the Estonian actor Jüri Järvet (dubbed into Russian) and is truly old, mad and heartbreaking, and the picture...
- 10/15/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
A view from the Circa Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa. Photograph by Laura Lane. The six-hour time difference hadn’t hit me yet when I arrived in Johannesburg from New York. So I was ready to see the city. I joined two other journalists, one from Brooklyn and the other from Toronto, and we headed out for an art tour. At David Krut’s print studio on Jan Smuts Avenue in Rosebank I ran into the artist William Kentridge. A Johannesburg native and household name in South Africa, Kentridge seemed to be everywhere. A gallery next door was showing his exhibition, “Nose - Thirty Etchings;” New York’s Museum of Modern Art was showing a Kentridge exhibition; and Kentridge did the set design and direction for Dmitri Shostakovich's opera The Nose, which opened at the Met in early March. (Kentridge also had a Gallery Met exhibition inspired by his work on the opera.
- 3/20/2010
- Vanity Fair
At the National Arts Centre tonight, the Mariinsky Orchestra, under the baton of Valery Gergiev, performed works by Berlioz, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich. The Rachmaninov was the 3rd Piano Concerto, with the dazzling Denis Matsuev as soloist. Here's a clip of Matsuev playing another piece of Rachmaninov's, "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini."
And here's the Mariinsky playing Dmitri Shostakovich's 13th Symphony. (They played the 15th tonight.)
The whole thing was spectacular. All I c...
And here's the Mariinsky playing Dmitri Shostakovich's 13th Symphony. (They played the 15th tonight.)
The whole thing was spectacular. All I c...
- 3/16/2010
- by Brendan Blom
- CultureMagazine.ca
(Cult)ure has just come from the National Arts Centre, where it saw the Mariinsky Orchestra, under the baton of Valery Gergiev, perform works by Berlioz, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich. The Rachmaninov was the 3rd piano concerto, with the dazzling Denis Matsuev as soloist. Here's a clip of Matsuev playing another piece of Rachmaninov's, "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini."
And here's the Mariinsky playing Dmitri Shostakovich's 13th Symphony. (They played the 15th tonight.)
The whole tRead More...
And here's the Mariinsky playing Dmitri Shostakovich's 13th Symphony. (They played the 15th tonight.)
The whole tRead More...
- 3/16/2010
- by brendan.blom@gmail.com
- CultureMagazine.ca
Singer and Hollywood star best known for her roles in MGM musicals of the 1940s and 50s
When coloratura soprano Kathryn Grayson, who has died aged 88, sang five songs, including an aria from La Traviata, in MGM's all-star patriotic parade, Thousands Cheer (1943), she began her 10-year reign as the prima donna of Hollywood. With her china-doll features, little turned-up nose and patrician manner, Grayson raised the tone of more than a dozen musicals. Although opera managers did not beat a path to her door, her clear, slightly shrill, small voice carried well on film in popular classics and operatic scenes.
Her classical training led her not to the opera house, but to the radio, in particular The Eddie Cantor Show, on which she was discovered by an MGM talent scout at the age of 18 in 1940. In the same year, she married the minor film actor John Shelton.
In her first film,...
When coloratura soprano Kathryn Grayson, who has died aged 88, sang five songs, including an aria from La Traviata, in MGM's all-star patriotic parade, Thousands Cheer (1943), she began her 10-year reign as the prima donna of Hollywood. With her china-doll features, little turned-up nose and patrician manner, Grayson raised the tone of more than a dozen musicals. Although opera managers did not beat a path to her door, her clear, slightly shrill, small voice carried well on film in popular classics and operatic scenes.
Her classical training led her not to the opera house, but to the radio, in particular The Eddie Cantor Show, on which she was discovered by an MGM talent scout at the age of 18 in 1940. In the same year, she married the minor film actor John Shelton.
In her first film,...
- 2/20/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Undertones: Volume 6 The classic science fiction film emerged during a period of great societal paranoia in the Us in the early 1950s. The post-WW2 environment saw an increased concern with nuclear armament and a fear of the infiltration of communism on the American way of life. Essentially, the sci-fi film was Hollywood’s great metaphor for these threats; its power largely dependent on playing on the fears of the cinema-goer. Many of the films were low-budget affairs pumped out by the studios; a steady stream of high-camp and cheap thrills in order to provide what one can only assume was constant necking-fodder for teens at drive-ins. Amongst these ‘B’ pictures, many of which have been long lost in time to the more technologically-savvy audiences of recent years but considered charming nostalgia to retro film junkies, are films that stand out for their innovation and social commentary and are considered classics by modern cinophiles.
- 10/1/2009
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Undertones: Volume 5 Removing the veneer of squeaky-clean suburban American life to reveal its seamy underbelly, David Lynch’s 1986 film, Blue Velvet, is a modern masterpiece and perhaps the most crystallized example of Lynch’s filmic vision. Concerned with the misadventure of a clean-cut teen called Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) who upon discovering and subsequently investigating a severed ear becomes caught up in a creepy criminal underworld headed by the disturbed Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), Blue Velvet is also significant for being Lynch’s first collaboration with composer Angelo Badalamenti. With his knack for juxtaposing angelic melodies that border on corny with dark harmonies that are weighed with dread, Badalamenti’s sound was the perfect musical accompaniment to the world depicted by Lynch in Blue Velvet. Badalamenti, who previously worked on film scores such as the blaxpoitation film Gordon’s War (Ossie Davis, 1973) and Law and Disorder (Ivan Passer, 1974), was introduced to...
- 8/18/2009
- by Clare Nina Norelli
- SoundOnSight
Undertones: Volume 3 From the beginning of cinema theatre owners tried a variety of methods in which to add sound to film. Initially the reasons for the addition of sound varied from people being weirded out by seeing mute folks onscreen to utilizing it as a means in which to mask the noise made by the crude projectors playing the film. It soon became obvious to film exhibitors however that sound actually enhanced the tone and interpretation by the audience of the film. When the Lumiere brothers first demonstrated their films in 1895 in Paris, they had a piano player accompany the action on screen. The pianist would watch the screen and capture the changes of mood. When the first theatres opened in 1902 in the USA, methods such as using someone to create sound effects and/or dialogue as well as Thomas Edison’s synchronised disc (not always guaranteed to synchronise) proved...
- 7/13/2009
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Shakespeare may be all about the words, but it's the images and music you remember most from "The Bard Goes Global," a well-curated film series starting Wednesday at the Walter Reade Theater.
Again and again, feasts for the eyes supersede the versification.
Take Grigori Kozintsev's criminally overlooked "King Lear/Korol Lir" (1971). Many of its scenes rate as pure, head-spinning genius: the way we peer down on Lear and his Fool as they struggle against howling winds, with Dmitri Shostakovich's score matching the storm in shrieky gusts.
Again and again, feasts for the eyes supersede the versification.
Take Grigori Kozintsev's criminally overlooked "King Lear/Korol Lir" (1971). Many of its scenes rate as pure, head-spinning genius: the way we peer down on Lear and his Fool as they struggle against howling winds, with Dmitri Shostakovich's score matching the storm in shrieky gusts.
- 7/13/2009
- by By ELISABETH VINCENTELLI
- NYPost.com
Alberta Cross Alberta Cross is the blues-rock quintette founded by Stockholm native Petter Ericson Stakee (vocals, guitar) and Londoner Terry Wolfers (bass) in 2005. Guitarist Sam Kearney, drummer Austin Beede, and keyboardist Alec Higginson round out the Brooklyn-based unit. Alberta Cross has a passionate and profound '70s mysticism amidst sincere rock-'n'-roll swagger. Check out the arresting "Song Three Blues" on their MySpace page--it satisfies. Currently on tour. Buy: MySpace Genre: Rock Artist: Alberta Cross Song: Song Three Blues Tour: Visit Dmitri Shostakovich Revolutionary 20th-century composer/pianist Dmitri Shostakovich was born in Russia in 1906. Considered a child prodigy, Dmitri began with piano and then moved on to composition. By the age of 19, he penned his first symphony and graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Dogged throughout his early career by Stalin's minions, he fell into a deep depression after being thrust into the Communist straitjacket in 1960....
- 5/22/2009
- by Phil Ramone and Danielle Evin
- Huffington Post
I don't believe I have ever reported the nominees for the International Film Music Critics Association before, but in the spirit of covering more award season news than is probably necessary I figured, "What the hell?" The nominees listed below make up the fifth annual International Film Music Critics Association Awards for Excellence with Wall-e receiving the most nominations including Film Score of the Year, Best Score for an Animated Film, Best Film Composition (for "Define Dancing") and Composer of the Year for Thomas Newman. The other big nominee is Danny Elfman who received the most individual nominations this year with seven: Composer of the Year; Film Score of the Year and Best Documentary Score for Standard Operating Procedure; Best Drama Score for Milk; Best Action/Adventure Score and Best Individual Cue for Wanted ("Success Montage"); and Best Fantasy/Science Fiction Score for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The International...
- 1/17/2009
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
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