A macabre sense of humour
Ligeti, Bartok: String quartets (BIS)
A Soviet revelation
David Oistrakh: The Warner Remastered Edition (58CDs, 3DVDs)
A full-blooded blow-out
Kurt Weill: Symphonies, Seven Deadly Sins (DG)
We must resurrect the symphony
Or the orchestra will die with it
Lebrecht’s Album of the Year
Not just a great record but an essential one
Not a dull phrase
Ethel Smyth: 2nd sonata &c (Delphian)
Exilic yearnings
Miklos Rozsa: violin concerto (LSO Live)
An excess of Fauré
Gabriel Fauré: Violin concerto (Naxos), Complete piano works (Calliope)
Passing the baton to the offspring
Does maestro talent run in the genes?
Impressive yet unmoving
Franz Schmidt: 4 symphonies (Naxos)
Religion without mercy
Progressivism has all the zeal of Christianity, but none of its emphasis on forgiveness
A statement flower
The most fanatical have spent fortunes to find the rarest and finest of these blooms
The great migration
What will Twitter do without its smuggest inhabitants?
Burgundy on a budget
In search of the wine lover’s holy grail
Murders of 2024
Jeremy Black reviews the best (and worst) murders from the last year
Killing with kindness
Sentimentality and euphemism cloak the cause of assisted suicide
The predictability of subverting expectations
What to expect when you’re expecting your expectations to be subverted
The Democratic Party deserves Donald Trump
Its arrogance and complacency have been exposed
Why is the BBC so obsessed with drag?
Incessant coverage of drag shows and drag queens has become something of a running joke
The decline of industry
English towns faced unique new challenges following deindustrialisation
St. Vincent
The acclaim is excessive but the talent undeniable
