Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
Christmas, irresistibly
Lise Davidsen: Christmas from Norway (Decca)/Miracle of Miracles (Cedille)
Notes of promise
Bruce Liu: Waves (Deutsche Grammophon)
A giant dipper of delights
BBC Legends Volume 4 (ICA Classics)
A celebration of redemption
Handel: Israel in Egypt (Avie)
Over-simplified and underpowered
Shostakovich symphonies 2, 3, 12, 13 (DG)
The world’s last measured moments
Joseph Haydn: Symphonies 93-95
A chronicle of gratitude and ambivalence
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: 12th symphony/Dawn (Chandos)
Mahler: Symphonies 1, 2 and songs (various labels)
The highs and lows of following a great
The end of the Emersons
Infinite Voyage: Emerson Quartet (Alpha Classics)
Immense energies
Grazyna Bacewicz: Piano concertos &c (Ondine)
Doom and bloom
Live woke and die
Landscapes of allusion and illusion
On the architecture of recreation
The predictability of subverting expectations
What to expect when you’re expecting your expectations to be subverted
The strange death of the Office for Place
The demise of the Office for Place is a missed opportunity for housing
Wanted: a plan to reform the NHS
No serious party can sit out the ideological battle over the remorseless rise in public spending, including on health
4B and the futility of heteropessimism
Romance is painful but it is also possible
A leadership bid you can’t refuse
Kemi Badenoch goes on a charm offensive
Labour is killing British farming
Attacks on British agriculture must be resisted
Will judges protect free speech for Christians?
A new case will determine whether expressing normal Christian beliefs precludes employment
The sadness of AI boyfriends
Technology can make romance frictionless and sterile
Why was I the only reporter?
On the sentencing of the Rotherham grooming gang
