Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
Baroque in a bad way
Vikingur Olafsson: Opus 109 (DG)
The start of something new
Kurt Weill: Love Life (Capriccio)
Pick ‘n’ mix albums hardly ever work
Schreker, Korngold, Krenek (BIS)
Of its time, but worth your time
Mikis Theodorakis: 1st symphony (TYXart.de)
Others fade to sepia
Walton, Britten, Tippett: Works for piano and orchestra (BIS)
Music for troubled souls
NIGUN (SWR Music)
An end-of-the-world air
Martinu: quartets/Kapralova: songs (Supraphon/Chandos)
The only Chopianist I care to listen to
Chopin: Mazurkas (Linn)
Tranquil and haunted
Arvo Pärt: And I heard a voice (ECM)
Transcending misery
Galina Ustvolskaya: Symphonies 1-5 (BIS)
Most Read
The Book of JO’B
James O’Brien’s aggressive incuriosity is becoming ever more embattled as his worldview crumbles
The rise and fall of Nicola Sturgeon
The former SNP leader squandered her talents in a classic tale of hubris
Fear and fury in Belfast
Violence spiralled out of control in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of a shocking crime
The screaming spires
Oxford University must clarify where it stands on academic freedom
Nigel Farage, community leader
The logic of multiculturalism is turning on its architects
The Symphony’s Indian summer
Imagine hearing a symphony for the first time
First time thrills
Most of all, it was a tournament of heroes and villains
A bore and a balm
Inferno: Behzod Abdurimov (Alpha Classics)
Playing by numbers
Attacking the Space:
Inside Rugby’s Tactical and Data
Revolution by Sam Larner
The trains have to run
Populists have had success in persuading people that they can govern — but can they actually govern?
A case for Classics
Eager minds are being failed by a smug and short-sighted cultural establishment
Cofnas, Cambridge and academic freedom
Truly provocative ideas are still unwelcome in our universities
Most of the world thinks differently to us
Universalism is based on irrational ideas about human nature
These violent delights
Pagliacci made the murder the true apex of the show
A moment of profound national unseriousness
Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch know that the world faces crises — but are they part of the crises?
Will capitalism end capitalism?
Artificial intelligence is perverting the logic of our economic and political systems