review
Verdi in the War Zone
SØS Gunver Ryberg blows Verdi apart from within in a fierce and sensuous Jeanne d’Arc, where the beauty of opera collides with the noise of war and the fractures of the present.
review
In the Shadow of Pärt
Estonian Music Days revealed a musical culture caught between tradition, renewal, and a restless world.
review
It Sounded Wild – But Did it Last?
MaerzMusik in Berlin opened with 50 pianos – and bold experiments that didn't always land.
review
CTM Festival in Berlin: Is the Electronic GPS Still On?
For a long time, CTM has served as a beacon for contemporary electronic music. But in an increasingly fragmented scene, the question arises: does the festival still show the way?
review
The Comfort of Art
At Borealis in Bergen, community is everywhere. But when everything is filtered through safety and intimacy, the music risks losing its necessity – and its bite.
review
We’ve Never Needed Pulsar Festival More
The major Danish composer festivals are starting to resemble each other more and more, but Pulsar Festival stands apart. Here, there is still more string quartet than performance art, making Pulsar an important alternative platform for new music – if only the festival itself would fully realize it.
review
What Happens When the Mainstream Falls Short?
Marina Abramović lets herself be murdered, burned, and thrown to her death in »Seven Deaths« at the Cisterns – but the operatic canon voiced by Maria Callas tempers the radicality that has otherwise carried her art through an entire lifetime.
review
When the World Trembles, Kirkenes Listens
At the Barents Spektakel art festival, war, borders and vibrations are transformed into sound, conversation and art at Europe’s northernmost edge.
review
A Country Built of Sound
Dark Music Days in Reykjavík offered everything from Bára Gísladóttir’s orchestral darkness to noise, seaweed and quiet song in Harpa – in a music scene where community matters as much as the export adventure.
review
Knausgård’s Apocalypse as Opera
Sebastian Fagerlund’s »Morgonstjärnan« transforms the novel’s existential unease into a powerful, collective musical drama.
review
Sacred, Profane, and Unsettlingly Alive
Sacrum Profanum in Kraków offered intense sonic experiences and musical battles – but also performances where the idea outweighed the music.
review
Matias Vestergård revisited
Revivals have moved onto the agenda among Danish composers, and this month two violent operas by Matias Vestergård benefited from the trend. What is it that makes him so good at writing precisely that kind of work?