Wigmore Hall, London
In her recital programme of Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern and Schubert, the Austrian pianist brought new insights and expressive playing
Eighty-year-old piano legend Elisabeth Leonskaja throws herself on to the piano stool and into the two tumultuous descending chromatic scales that open Beethoven’s Op 77 Fantasia in G minor in a single gesture. We have a long way to go in a recital programme that reads like an Mittel-European lucky dip – Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern, Schubert – and Leonskaja isn’t messing around.
Of course, there was nothing chance about the programming. The Austrian pianist’s expressive, emotional playing may grab the headlines, but it’s the unerring sense of underlying architecture that’s the thread through her long career. We heard that here, not just within each of the works, but in the shared foundations, and sometimes secret connecting passages, she revealed between them.
Continue reading...Djidji Ayôkwé was handed to Ivorian officials in Paris earlier this month
A sacred artefact looted by French colonial authorities more than a century ago has been returned to Côte d’Ivoire in one of the most significant cultural restitutions to a former French colony in years.
The Djidji Ayôkwé, a talking drum confiscated in 1916 by French administrators, landed at 8.45am on Friday at the airport in Port Bouët on the outskirts of the economic capital, Abidjan. It was handed over to Ivorian officials in Paris earlier this month after being removed from the Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum.
Continue reading...Ridiculed, ‘memed’ and consigned to worst-dressed lists, seven standout Oscar outfits from over the years
At the 2001 Oscars, Gladiator won best picture with Russell Crowe picking up best actor. But, if those facts might have faded to fodder for a pub quiz, the red carpet produced a moment of fashion legend – Björk wearing what is now known as “the swan dress”.
Made by the Macedonian designer Marjan Pejoski, the tutu skirt with the swan draped around the musician’s neck – and egg accessories – was panned. “It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen,” said the TV fashion critic Steven Cojocaru.
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ROTTERDAM (ANP) - Nederlandse zeevarenden die vastzitten in de Perzische Golf zijn boos over het uitblijven van een oorlogstoeslag. Die krijgen ze nog niet, omdat Nederlandse rederijen het gebied niet erkennen als oorlogsgebied. De vakbond voor de zeevarenden Nautilus is verbolgen en overweegt juridische stappen, laat bestuurder Richard Moti weten.
In de cao van zeevarenden is afgesproken dat ze een dubbele gage krijgen wanneer er door een oorlogsgebied wordt gevaren, legt Moti uit. "De oorlogstoeslagregeling staat zwart op wit, maar de reders weigeren al ruim een week om het als oorlogsgebied te erkennen. Het is heel simpel voor iedereen die het nieuws volgt, maar de reders doen alsof het niet simpel is."
De vakbond had de reders een deadline gegeven, maar dat had geen effect. Moti hoopt dat het toch nog goedkomt. "Anders beraden we ons over een kort geding. Ik zou het diep triest vinden als het zo ver moet komen."
Sinds het uitbreken van de Iranoorlog is de Straat van Hormuz gesloten, waardoor schepen vastzitten in de Perzische Golf.
WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - De onlangs verkozen opperste leider van Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, is gewond en vermoedelijk verminkt. Dat zei de Amerikaanse minister van Defensie Pete Hegseth vrijdag in een persconferentie.
Onbekend is wat Mojtaba mankeert, al klinken er geruchten dat zijn voet zou zijn geraakt.
Khamenei werd afgelopen weekend door een daartoe bevoegde commissie van theologen verkozen als opvolger van zijn vader, Ali Khamenei. Die kwam vroeg in de oorlog van Israël en de VS tegen Iran om, bij een door Israël geclaimde aanval op Teheran. Bij die aanval zouden ook andere belangrijke staatslieden zijn omgekomen.
Khamenei jr. is sinds zijn benoeming niet in het openbaar verschenen. Israël zei direct na de aanval op Ali Khamenei iedere opvolger te beschouwen als legitiem moorddoelwit.
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
The European Space Agency’s mission to discover Earth-like exoplanets, Plato, is now sealed in the Large Space Simulator (LSS) chamber at ESA’s Test Centre for a series of vital tests under space‑like conditions.
Engineers placed Plato in the LSS on 18 February, and since the beginning of March the spacecraft has been experiencing the extreme temperatures and vacuum of space. This photo captures the satellite standing in the centre of the simulator, moments before the chamber was bolted closed.
The picture was taken from the top opening of the LSS and gives us a direct view of Plato’s 26 ultrasensitive cameras. These are the special eyes that the mission will use to monitor more than 150 000 bright stars at the same time, hunting for terrestrial planets orbiting Sun-like stars.
The mission is expected to be ready for launch by the end of the year. Liftoff on an Ariane 6 is planned by Arianespace for January 2027.
But before launching a spacecraft, it is crucial to operate it and check all its functionalities in a space-like environment. The LSS offers just that.
A cylindrical container standing 15 m high and 10 m wide, the LSS is Europe's largest cryovacuum chamber. Equipped with a high-performance pump, the enclosure achieves a pressure a billion times lower than the sea-level atmospheric pressure, while liquid nitrogen circulating around its casing reproduces the extreme low temperatures of space.
Exposed to a grid of powerful heating elements (so-called ‘calrods’) that simulate the heat of the Sun, the backside of the spacecraft – with solar panels and sunshield – reaches a toasty 160 °C. At the same time, thanks to the sunshield and excellent insulation, the cameras and the optical bench facing the dark, cold part of the chamber are kept very cool at around –80 °C, as if facing deep space.
Plato will reemerge from the space simulator at the end of March.
[Image description: Photo taken looking down into a black‑walled cylinder, at the bottom of which sits a large satellite with black panels and golden surfaces. On top of the spacecraft, we see the blue, shiny lenses of 26 large cameras. The cameras are mounted on a five‑stepped platform and arranged in four rows of six cameras, plus a top row with two cameras.]
Credits:
ESA
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
This image from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission shows us the maritime traffic passing through theØresund Strait in 2025.
The 118-km-long Øresund Strait (also known as the Sound) separates Denmark to the west from Sweden to the east and links the Baltic Sea to the North Sea, which makes it one of the busiest waterways in the world.
Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar instruments to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface, making it ideal to monitor ship traffic. Here, more than 50 radar images over the same area, acquired every six days throughout 2025, have been compressed into a single image.
Radar data are interpreted by studying the intensity of the backscattered radar signal. Areas where the radar signal is reflected away from the satellite, such as water bodies and smooth surfaces, appear darker, while areas where the signal is reflected back to the satellite, such as urban areas, metal objects or hard infrastructure, appear lighter.
In this image, ships appear as bright, sparkly dots in the dark waters of the strait. The routes of marine traffic are clear to see in the channel with the main shipping lanes highlighted by the concentration of ships.
Most notable are the high-density clusters of bright points near the ports of Copenhagen and Malmö. These are ‘waiting areas’ where ships remain stationary for longer periods, increasing the probability of being captured across multiple satellite passes.
Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital, is near the centre of the strait on the eastern side of the islands of Zealand and Amager. Copenhagen Airport is visible as a cross-shaped, black structure on the eastern side of Amager.
The bright, elongated feature in the strait in front of the airport is the artificial island of Peberholm. It is part of the Øresund Bridge, a combined bridge-tunnel across the strait that connects Copenhagen with the city of Malmö on the Swedish coast. Peberholm serves as a crossover point between the bridge, visible as a thin, white line to its eastern end, and the Drogden underwater tunnel on the Danish side.
The geometric patterns of dots, visible south of the bridge about 10 km off the Swedish coast, are the turbines of the Lillgrund Wind Farm, which is Sweden's largest offshore wind farm. Another group of wind turbines can be seen off the coast of Copenhagen harbour: the 20 turbines of the Middelgrunden offshore wind farm appear as a 3.4-km-long string of pearls in the dark water of the strait.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO