A genius who could say “no”
The things Beethoven never did
Instruments of shock and awe
Jean Sibelius/Arne Nordheim; The Tempest (Naxos/LAWO)
Englishness with an aftertaste
The pleasures of cowpats
No ordinary musicologist
Krzysztof Meyer, Dmitri Shostakovich: Cello-piano sonatas (Kaleidos)
An enemy of the best
Nothing routine, showy or ill-considered
A college in tune with the times
How music colleges need to adjust to the twenty-first century
Outwards and inwards
Drawing the ear into every era of western music
A hundred shades of autumn leaves
He grips the attention with every phrase
A guaranteed crowd pleaser
Let the brass section blow cobwebbed memories to kingdom come
Rage captured to perfection
Chamber symphonies were a neglected genre revived during the Covid shutdowns
Most Read
The establishment is still living in an immigration fantasy land
It is influential left-wingers, not the broader public, who have deluded themselves on mass migration
American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
President Trump’s intervention will leave the world safer than it was
Saint Nicola
Nicola Sturgeon wants sympathy for her husband’s crimes—but after years spent avoiding awkward questions, her latest reinvention may be the hardest sell yet.
On Britain as a capitalist command economy
It is neither neoliberal nor socialist but a secret third thing
Rewatching the English
English identity has become too surreal and discomfiting to define
Morals before wealth
250 years after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, an earlier work remains the key to understanding it.
Carry on, matron
The crisis in nursing can be reversed by a return to Florence Nightingale’s vision of vocation and a rebuilt hierarchy on the wards
Bonfire of the fallacies
Two opposing ideas about hard power and foreign policy — legalism and nihilism — are being exposed by the Trump
administration
The Middle Kingdom and the middle powers
China’s clash with Western power shattered its civilisational self-image. Europe is heading for a similar reckoning
Who will pound longest?
America has military might — but does it have the appetite for war?
Reform’s man in Makerfield
An interview with Rob Kenyon about online controversies and national priorities
British foreign policy must serve British interests
It is time to put aside legalistic and moralistic nonsense and focus on what is best for Britain
The case for vapes
Arguments for prohibitionism disappear in a cloud of vapour
Britain’s mutilated constitution
We must restore the old to build the new
The paté of the Land
Chinese water deer, partridges and paté
Critical briefing: energy price shocks
The shocks from the Iran War are yet to be felt, but are sure to be powerful