Who is a Ukrainian musician?
Music and ethnicity are both more complex than nationalism allows
Schulhoff, Popov: String quartets (QBT)
A Baedeker tour of Europe’s miseries, amidst the outrage in Ukraine
Joyce DiDonato: Eden (Erato); Asmik Grigorian: Rachmaninov (Alpha)
This is singing as mildly polemical conversation, from her to us
The concert hall of the future
A performance space without walls or limits
Grazyna Bacewicz: Piano works (Ondine)
One would never imagine Stalinist oppression was raging all around her
Alexander Scriabin: Mazurkas (Hyperion)
Rediscovering the patriarch of Russian piano composition
Hans Werner Henze: Night pieces and arias (Naxos)
Why are so many in the dark about Germany’s leading musical light?
Nastasia Khrushcheva: Normal Music (Melodiya)
In troubled times for Russia, this album hints at the future of the country’s music
Unfinished? Don’t start!
A new project to restore Beethoven’s incomplete symphony borders on pathological necromancy
Brahms: Clarinet sonatas (BIS), French clarinet music (Delphian)
Three sonatas by Brahms? The clarinet adaptation, to no surprise, doesn’t work
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American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
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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.
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Rewatching the English
English identity has become too surreal and discomfiting to define
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Bicinia (Claves)
How procedure is enabling petty criminals
We should support workers who confront criminals
Fit for a queen
Hannah Betts reassesses the late Queen as a royal style maven
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The rule of law was meant to protect liberty — not to be weaponised against democracy
London vs the rest of the country
The publishing industry should aim to be more provincial and less metropolitan
Supernatural delight
Religion cannot be reduced to dry abstractions
A below-par Riley is still better than most
The Palm House by
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Tuttle; Still Talking by Lore Segal
The Islamopopulist march continues
Overshadowed by the Reform and Green surges, the Muslim vote continues a long march through the corridors of power
Light my fire
A perfect spy requires a spark for his cigarette
Dismantle the infrastructure of censoriousness
Digital technology and private intelligence are bolstering cultural censoriousness in universities
Two faces of America
Copland: 3rd symphony, Walker 5th (LSO Live)