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FILM

German duo dance to win European figure skating title

Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany took the European Figure Skating pairs title for the third successive year in Helsinki on Wednesday.

Published: 22 January 2009 08:18 CET
German duo dance to win European figure skating title
Photo: DPA

The reigning world champions picked up 199.07 points dancing to the music from the Oscar-winning film “Schindler’s List.”

In second came Russian duo Yuko Kawaguchi and Alexander Smirnov with 182.77 points with their compatriots, Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov (182.07) in third.

Szolkowy, who along with Ukraine-born Savchenko has also won minor medals at the worlds and Europeans as well as being crowned national champions six times, said that their performance on Wednesday had been a marked improvement on Tuesday’s short programme.

“We skated a lot better this evening than on Tuesday (when they lay second behind Mukhortova and Trankova),” said the 29-year-old.

“And even if we committed some small errors tonight, overall we are very proud of the free programme.”

But while he was impressed by their performance, he admitted that the 6,000 or so spectators had left him and his partner cold.

“We asked ourselves whether they were asleep or in the least bit interested,” he said.

While Smirnov and Kawaguchi had to be content with silver, Kawaguchi at east could lay claim to being the only skater to succeed in attempting and executing a quadruple Salchow during the rendition of “I Pagliacci.”

“We are very happy with our result this evening, in spite of some minor mistakes, because we have moved up a place compared to last year,” Kawaguchi said.

By contrast Mukhortova-Trankov slipped a place from last year, especially disappointing as they had led overnight, but a heavy fall by Mukhortova while attempting a triple Salchow ensured that there was to be no gold medal payday.

“I battled against all the elements and I hurt myself when I fell,” she said.

In the afternoon session Frenchman and world silver medallist Brian Joubert had beaten his personal record in a short programme to take the lead in the men’s competition in front of holder Tomas Verner of the Czech Republic and Italy’s Samuel Contesti.

Joubert, who is on course for a third European title or at the very least an eighth medal, declared himself confident enough for Thursday’s finale even if he is skating a new free programme in the form of the music from Hollywood blockbuster “Matrix.”

“I do not reflect the film in my programme, it is just the music that pleases me,” said Joubert, whose efforts earlier in the season with music from another blockbuster “Last of the Mohicans” was not a success.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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