Album Review
Too formal for the pub
Mr Händel im pub: Baroque meets folk (Arcantus)
Unenticing overtures
Rautavaara: 3rd piano concerto (Bis); Overtures from Finland (Chandos)
Contemplating infinity
Franz Liszt: Transcendental Etudes (Steinway)
Delicate decadence
A tantalising selection of songs
New work, sounding old
A disappointing new collection
An unreviewable album
The music is beautiful; the context is not
No more than curiosities
Bruno Walter: String quartet, piano quintet (CPO)
An epochal set
Nielsen: The Symphonies (DG)
Music of the here and now
Valentin Silvestrov: Silent Songs (DG)
Captivating concertos
Beethoven/Ravel: Concertos (Avanticlassic)
The Meloni effect
How the Italian prime minister could reshape European politics
Landscapes of allusion and illusion
On the architecture of recreation
Keir’s woetanical garden
Labour still don’t understand the scale of the reforms that are needed
The grim quasi-religious doctrine of “unconscious bias training”
Baroness Royall’s commitment to the idea should concern Oxford students, academics and administrators
Tragedy, comedy and an Italian parable
Three great novels capture a moment of change for society
Why personal insults fail
Getting personal might be mean, but it is also ineffective
The price of victory
Benjamin Netanyahu has won battles, but there is no foreseeable end to the war
Blue-collar brilliance
1970s Pittsburgh wasn’t just a steel town: it was the steel town
What’s the point of university during a freedom of speech crisis?
Students should be taught to do more than agree
Fleeing Sally Rooney’s god
Why have critics been ignoring one of the novelist’s most important themes?
“Nice” people need to read this book
How women have been hounded throughout the gender wars
