Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
Not so easy listening
Janacek, Brahms, Bartok: Violin sonatas (Alpha-Classics/Outhere)
Album of the year
Rich pickings in dark times
Our ultimate moment
Outstanding art for troubled times
Make Mozart great again
Music that lifts the heart
Playing that pulls no punches
Kholodenko is in the elite of classical pianists
Sibelius: Symphonies 3&5 (Alpha-Classics)
There’s a new burst of steam from the sauna
The bore of the world
Give this one a miss
Schumann/Mahler: Symphonies 1&2 (Naxos)
Schumann cannot be ignored
Gustav Mahler: 5th symphony (Pentatone)
Its ethos in Mahler remains inimitable
The Kreutzer Project (Avie)
An album sadly more quixotic than chivalric
We’re all living in America
Britain’s elite is obsessed with Trump and the States, when it needs to concentrate on the Home Front
The joy of pets
Pet ownership is one of life’s simple pleasures, but it also lifts the soul
Explaining the “gender pay gap”
It does not exist — or, at least, not as you might have thought
Therapy is making children ill
What would really help children’s mental health is talk about resilience
Don’t ban anti-Israel marches
Principled and pragmatic arguments for prohibition are weak
Fifth magician blues
He made the tea, he forged the autographs, and only once did he run out of plectrums
When classicists attack classics
Sanskrit isn’t the only ancient language to be affected by academic imperialism
When the populist meets the Pope
Javier Milei and Pope Francis represent very different and often hostile elements of Argentinian cultural life
Ireland has become an exporter of gender ideology
An architect of Irish trans policy has been elected Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe
In praise of centibillionaires
When people are free to make a lot of money from new businesses, everybody wins
Four women seers in a time of strife
Eilenberger’s design is to present philosophy outside the lecture theatre in its life-transforming power
