The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz
The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz |
| ‘Great Expectations’ rounds off London film festival Posted: 30 Aug 2012 04:42 AM PDT LONDON, Aug 30 — An all-star film adaptation of Dickens' classic novel "Great Expectations" will round off the London film festival this year, marking the 200th anniversary of the author's birth, organisers said today.
The film, directed by Mike Newell and scripted by "One Day" author David Nicholls, will make its European premiere at the festival on October 21, before hitting British cinemas on November 30. Both Fiennes and Bonham Carter, whose partner Tim Burton will kick off the festival with his animated film "Frankenweenie", are expected to attend. "I'm proud that our new version of 'Great Expectations' should be presented this year, the bicentenary of Dickens' birth," said Newell, who directed "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". "I've tried to make a film that is true to the theatrical vividness, energetic characters and high colour that he is loved for, while mining the deep seams of emotional cruelty and madness that underlie one of Dickens' darkest-shadowed stories," Newell said. This year's British Film Institute (BFI) London film festival runs from October 10-21, and the full lineup will be announced on September 5. — Reuters |
| French pianist admires Debussy as ‘hedonist’ of sound Posted: 30 Aug 2012 04:05 AM PDT LONDON, Aug 30 — Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard describes Claude Debussy as a "hedonist" of sound, and perhaps that's what makes both of them so French. "I know that if I use these words in this country, or in Germany, this would be interpreted in another way," the voluble 54-year-old titan of the modern piano repertoire, as well as the classics, told Reuters over coffee at a London hotel. "In France, not at all," he said, adding that Debussy was admired and appreciated for his "deep intensity, soft sensuality and incredible precision".
The second book contains some of Debussy's most popular works, such as "La Cathedrale Engloutie" (The Submerged Cathedral), which the Japanese composer Isao Tomita turned into a 1970s hit in an arrangement for Moog synthesizer. Aimard has recorded both books but the second is the gnarlier of the two, which is perhaps why Aimard — who loves nothing more than to tackle a fiendishly difficult etude by his one-time close friend, the late Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti — will play it at Cadogan Hall. "Why No. 2? Because of the development of everything in the second book, how it stretches in terms of harmonies, space, ambiguity," he said. "Debussy was one of the three big modernist composers, with Stravinsky and Schoenberg, but without making a revolution, almost discreetly. You could say he's deep, but in a tradition of hedonism in music. "He adored food, women and he adored music, and when you hear his music you hear sounds that are incredibly well put together and highly inspiring." Aesthetics, or what he calls "the pleasure of sounds", mean a lot to Aimard, who said that next year he was going to be taking a sabbatical. "I will make a tour, playing Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms ... and the sabbatical is afterwards. So you will not meet, you will not hear from me." It is not unusual for someone with a demanding schedule, like Aimard, who also is the artistic director of the Aldeburgh festival founded by the composer Benjamin Britten in the seaside town in Suffolk, England, to take time out, but he has more on his plate than most. Aimard thinks a lot about programming, interpretation, the future of music, and the future of the performing tradition. "I try to learn something every day and if I don't I feel very unhappy," he said. He spent, by his own reckoning, 15 years working with Ligeti, in effect as a collaborator, on the set of piano etudes, a piano concerto and other piano works that increasingly are recognised as among the great works for the instrument from the latter half of the 20th century. Repository of tradition Since Ligeti's death in 2006, Aimard is the repository of the playing and performance tradition of those works. "What was important was for the interpreter to be the witness for the creator, so there will be a memory, otherwise when we forget, that's bad." He hopes that one way or another the tradition can rub off on the younger generation of pianists, who as they come out of conservatories are technical wizards, who have no trouble tackling the toughest that Ligeti, or any other composer, has to offer, but perhaps, Aimard said, lacks artistic depth. "I think that a lot of people think that the technical level of young piano players is often very high but a lot of people are not sure that the artistic level is as high as one would wish," he said. "The question is to know what society wishes to have: I think that society needs to have people with ability but we need especially good cultural education, that is the priority for our society." — Reuters |
Starring Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch and Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham, the film will have Jeremy Irvine playing Pip, an orphan who is catapulted out of poverty and transformed into a gentleman by a mysterious benefactor.
Aimard chose his words carefully during an interview while on a visit to pick out a piano for a BBC Proms recital on September 3 in which he will play the second book of the late-19th, early 20th-century composer's famous preludes.| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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