Devilishly good
Liszt: Faust Symphony (Bis)
Indulgent Italian treats
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Complete string quartets (Naxos)
Illicit fun
Jonathan Leibowitz: Eastern Reflections (Delphian)
Composed and electrifying
Klaus Tennstedt: The Radio Broadcasts (Doremi, 4CDs)
Defend the arts … before it’s too late
It will take more than a new government and a bonfire of policy documents to put things right
How short is an arm in the arts?
ACE’s politicisation goes back all the way to the Blair government
Great big rain showers
C Schumann/Grieg: Piano concertos (Signum)
Giving Mozart a makeover
Mozart: The Salzburg Project (Warner)
Messing with the master’s work
Beethoven: Emperor Concerto; Brett Dean: A Winter’s Journey (Orchid)
Anger and intuition
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: String quartets 6, 13, 15 (Chandos)
What does it mean to be Christian?
We are in danger of reducing faith to the shallow depths of personality and politics
Justin Welby should resign
If sin means anything, how can the Church of England hierarchy be maintained?
A beguiling star who loved melodrama
Taylor’s hunger for money, flashy gizmos and flashier gewgaws found its echo in Burton’s need to forsake the classics
Don’t trust the Runnymede Trust
The law is too indulgent of political charities
Lightweight Kate Winslet
Our most versatile of English roses must accept that one role is beyond even her
Academic freedom needs legal safeguards
Violations of academic freedom are endangering the progress of knowledge and the pursuit of truth
Chill message of Booker shortlist
The contempt of publishers for middle-class life and values is diminishing the novel
The Critic guide to glass ceilings
On the self-made men (and women!) of the Labour Party
No average Joe
“He looked like the Milkybar Kid but played like Clint Eastwood”
Dissolve the hotbeds of wokery
Failing universities should go the way of the monasteries under Henry VIII
Don’t bite the hand that feeds the birds
The government’s flawed biodiversity analysis endangers successful state-funded schemes
