Album Review
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)
Flickering with fire and ice
Beethoven: 1st piano concerto, &c (DG)
The world’s last measured moments
Joseph Haydn: Symphonies 93-95
A chronicle of gratitude and ambivalence
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: 12th symphony/Dawn (Chandos)
The ultimate collaborator
Sergio Tiempo: Hommage (Avanti)
The end of the Emersons
Infinite Voyage: Emerson Quartet (Alpha Classics)
Immense energies
Grazyna Bacewicz: Piano concertos &c (Ondine)
Stop loving losers
Rishi Sunak does not deserve the media’s perverse rehabilitation project
Bedlam bingo
Sex, death, sado-masochism and blasphemy in a heady cocktail
Was The Bible written by slaves?
A new book maintains that enslaved scribes and readers may have affected the shaping of Christian ideas
Posh pinks
Upscale rosés sans biodynamic woo-woo, please
Starmer’s next step
The Labour leader has the chance to win trust as well as votes this election
Gambling with the numbers
A new survey of problem gamblers has serious problems of its own
Loony tunes
Opera begs leave to celebrate lunacy in a different way
The gender wars have not been won
“No debate” has been defeated — but the debate is still ongoing
Schrödinger’s sex binary
We have to resist the mass gaslighting of women and girls
Speak loudly, and carry a small stick
The Tory Party under Rishi Sunak has been all bark and no bite
