Standout singers
If Music (Erato), Day of These Days (Delphian) & Eisnacht (Genuin)
Italian elegance
Italian Perspectives (Pentatone)
Mehta’s protest over the Gaza war
In the run-up to his 90th birthday, Zubin Mehta decided to sever contact with Israel
Diabolically good
Sergei Prokofiev: 2nd violin concerto &c (Warner Classics)
Alkan the Awesome
Alkan: Complete organ works, vol. 1 (Signum Classics)
The lost soul of Hungarian music
Leo Weiner: Violin concerto (Naxos)
A cherishable dream
Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (Hyperion)
Why we need orchestras
China has grasped that an orchestra is more than a payroll of musicians
The twilight of genius
Dmitri Shostakovich: The last 3 quartets (Harmonia Mundi)
A better America
American Tapestry (Signum)
Most Read
How religion shapes football fandom
The meaning of football is intertwined with the meaning of faith
Labour’s mercurial kingmaker
The eventful career of Josh Simons, the man who gave up his seat for Andy Burnham
In defence of Lara Bird
There is nothing weird or dishonest about having a dual existence
Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?
He was the perfect embodiment of a failing system
The hitch with the Hitch
How Christopher Hitchens brought me back to Christ
Where is Britain’s vision?
Modern Britain has acquired a lack of national purpose, except for policies that are self-harming
Mass hysteria
Sancta, Flanders Opera, Antwerp
The dog that failed to bark
Jeremy Corbyn hoped the local
elections would be a launch pad for
his new party. Instead, Your Party
has mostly been arguing with itself
Brave new world or fools’ paradise?
For Dubai’s quarter of a million British expats, the Iran war is a mere blip in a luxurious lifestyle
The fog of facts
As elections approach, voters are forced to navigate a swamp of spin, distortion, and inaccessible data.
California dying
The world’s dream factory now produces scenes from a dystopia
Critical briefing: cuckooing
A hidden scourge has been plaguing British streets for too long
The lonely death of Henry Nowak
We must draw lessons from a horrendous and disgraceful case
Trump will not discredit Europe’s populist right
European populism is a lot deeper than mere Trumpism
The sacrifice that changed Naipaul
The humiliation of his father, forced to slaughter a goat to atone for
angering Hindus, made the writer wary of insulting religion
Why people smuggling means profits
People smuggling is one of the few functioning markets left in the UK