Blu-ray: Strange New Worlds - Science Fiction at DEFA

★★★★★ STRANGE NEW WORLD - SCIENCE FICTION AT DEFA Eye-popping Cold War sci-fi epics

Eye-popping Cold War sci-fi epics from East Germany, superbly remastered and annotated

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.

Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, Tate Modern review - memories are made of this

★★★★ DO HO SUH: WALK THE HOUSE, TATE MODERN Memories are made of this

Home sweet home preserved as exquisite replicas

A traditional Korean house has appeared at Tate Modern. And with its neat brickwork, beautifully carved roof beams and lattice work screens, this charming dwelling looks decidedly out of place, and somewhat ghostly. Go closer and you realise that, improbably, the full-sized building is made of paper. It’s the work of South Korean artist Do Ho Suh (main picture).

Album: Ronny Graupe's Szelest - Newfoundland Tristesse

A deep, subtle and constantly engaging album

In this new album, three top-flight musicians based in Berlin, guitarist Ronny Graupe, Lucia Cadotsch (voice) and Kit Downes (piano) work collaboratively, superbly, as a real team. The music, some well-known tunes which Cadotsch sings hauntingly, and some original tunes by Graupe – it’s hard to tell them apart – just flows superbly.

Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind computer generated doppelgängers

Emotions too raw to explore

The best way to experience Ed Atkins’ exhibition at Tate Britain is to start at the end by watching Nurses Come and Go, But None For Me, a film he has just completed. It lasts nearly two hours but is worth the investment since it reveals what the rest of the work tries hard to avoid openly confronting – grief.

Le nozze di Figaro, Komische Oper Berlin, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - great singing wasted

★★ LE NOZZE DI FIGARO, KOMISCHE OPER BERLIN, EIF Great singing wasted

Entertaining in places, this is Kirill Serebrennikov’s piece, not Mozart’s

I’m all in favour of the EIF taking artistic risks, and of them bringing a high-prestige international production to Edinburgh. This Marriage of Figaro from Berlin’s Komische Oper is both of those things, because it is the first production by Kirill Serebrennikov – the high profile Russian director, placed under house arrest by the Putin regime, now based in Berlin – to be seen in the UK.

Nachtland, Young Vic review - German black comedy brings uneasy humour and discomfiting relevance

★★★ NACHTLAND, YOUNG VIC Patrick Marber directs flawed but fascinating disquisition on the past's relevance to the present in art, politics and morality

Something to laugh at and plenty to think about in a tonally inconsistent 90 minutes

If Mark Twain thought that a German joke was no laughing matter, what would he make of a German comedy? 

Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall review - every note of Brahms’ late genius carefully weighed

★★★★ IGOR LEVIT, WIGMORE HALL All four sets of Brahms late piano pieces, but head rules heart

All four sets of late piano pieces in one concert, but head rules heart

Successful performances, conductor Robin Ticciati once suggested to me, are when “the head has a conversation with the heart”. The same goes, surely, for great music, though from personal experience one has to reach a certain age to find that true of Brahms. Last night Igor Levit seemed to favour the head, occasionally missing, for me, that very elusive something at the heart of Brahms’s late piano pieces.

Prom 60: Gerstein, Berlin RSO, Jurowski review - a master conductor returns with his German band

★★★★★ PROM 60: GERSTEIN, BERLIN RSO, JUROWSKI A master conductor returns

Perfect programme with nods to collegiality and Proms founder Henry Wood

During his transformational time at the helm of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski conducted the complete Threepenny Opera in concert and two performances of Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony which changed my mind about its being good only in parts. Last night’s interpretation made his fellow Russian’s late fantasy billow and soar, while Weill’s Little Threepenny Music opened with sheer stylish delight in the song/dance numbers framed by incisive austerity.

Tannhäuser, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Edinburgh International Festival 2023 - compelling concert Wagner

★★★★★ TANNHAUSER, DEUTSCHE OPER BERLIN, EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL Donald Runnicles returns to Scotland with his top German company

Donald Runnicles returns to Scotland with his top German company

This was one of the more strait-laced concert performances, with few concessions to Wagner’s underlying stage drama. The soloists were in formal concert dress, strung out in a line at the front of the stage, with interaction between them limited to looks of anguish and the sparest of gestures. The shepherd boy in Act 1 was banished to the upper reaches of the organ gallery, and there was a substantial off-stage band in Act 2, but otherwise there was nothing to distract us from the music.