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1 week ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
DEFA was East Germany’s state film studio, operating between 1946 and 1992. Among its vast output were four lavish science fiction adventures, released between 1960 and 1976 and shown here in gleaming new transfers. Each one, to varying degrees, depicts the future through a rose-coloured lens, the world evolving into a utopian socialist paradise where disputes are settled peacefully.
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3 weeks ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
Brahms: Lieder Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Gerold Huber (piano) (Sony) The concert I attended of Brahms Lieder in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in October 2024, with Christian Gerhaher in fabulous voice and Gerold Huber at the peak of his craft was fabulous – five star review of that very special evening here. I was therefore overjoyed to discover only recently that they had made this recording of a very similar programme just one week before.
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1 month ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
Eureka’s second volume of Laurel and Hardy shorts catches the pair in 1928 on the cusp of their successful transition to the sound era, two of the 10 films originally released with synchronised sound effects and music. This works especially well in We Faw Down, though having another actor dub Stan’s laugh is disconcerting.
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1 month ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
Jürg Frey: Voices EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble/James Weeks (Neu Records) A new CD from EXAUDI is a guaranteed treat for all the senses: the sound quality is always impeccable, the CD presentation a tactile pleasure. Heck, it even smells good (a mixture of new car and old bookshop).
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1 month ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
All We Imagine as Light focuses on the lives of three women in contemporary Mumbai; as shown by director Payal Kapadia, the city is arguably the film’s fourth major character. Kapadia eschews convention, her metropolis painted in muted colours with dark skies and heavy rain a constant.
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1 month ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
Thomas Adès: Orchestral Suites London Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Adès (LPO) Here are three orchestral suites taken from stage works by Thomas Adès, from different stages of his career, captured at live performances at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2018 and 2023. So not new recordings, but good to have these in one place to trace the composer’s career from prodigious breakthrough to acknowledged master.
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2 months ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle and it is impossible to choose between the evils”. Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a run-down village purely by chance, tossing a stick in the air at a fork in the road to choose which direction to take.
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2 months ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
Vox Feminae: Works for voices, theorbo/tiorbino/ baroque guitar, bass viol, triple harp by Barbara Strozzi, Antonia Bemba and Hieryonymus Kapsberge Les Kapsber’girls/Albane Imbs (Alpha) What a complete transformation from one album to the next. The last one, Vous-avez dit brunettes? – did you say brunettes – (Alpha, 2021) opened tongue-in-cheek with the bleating and bells of a flock of sheep, then launching into occasionally over-theatrical songs about shepherds, love or drinking.
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2 months ago | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
One of The Barnabáš Kos Case’s incidental pleasures lies in its relatively accurate depiction of orchestral life. Much of the action in Peter Solan’s 1964 Slovak black comedy (originally title: Prípad Barnabáš Kos) takes place in a rehearsal studio, one filled with real, non-miming musicians. Actor Milivoj Uzelac, playing one of the conductors, was also a composer and actually looks convincing on the podium.
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Mar 7, 2025 | 
theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson
Quartets Through a Time of Change: music by Ravel, Durey, Tailleferre and Milhaud Brother Tree Sound (First Hand Records) There are plenty – and I mean plenty – of recordings of the Ravel String Quartet, the majority, I would guess, paired with the Debussy Quartet, in what has become something of a programming cliché.
