Classical Music
Stories worth telling
Untold Stories (Hyperion)
A macabre sense of humour
Ligeti, Bartok: String quartets (BIS)
All gone to look for America
The show is a mishmash, in need of some pruning and a sharper edge
Subscribe to save the BBC
A radical new solution to the problem of the BBC’s outmoded licence fee that could ensure more high-quality programming
A full-blooded blow-out
Kurt Weill: Symphonies, Seven Deadly Sins (DG)
Too many silences in this book about music
The hazy treatment of what “music” even entails falls flat
Lebrecht’s Album of the Year
Not just a great record but an essential one
The tragedy of Radio 3
The centenary “celebration” of the BBC Singers summed up everything that has gone wrong
Worthy instrument
York Bowen, Willam Walton: Viola concertos (SWR Music)
When the music stopped
A reflection on the inexorable decline of arts education and the rise of knee-jerk politics and managerialism
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
Trump: Post-Modernist?
The former — and future? — president has an awkward but interesting relationship with the truth
Why won’t Chris Whitty go away?
He lingers on — a slap-headed Rasputin whispering terrible ideas into the ears of our leaders
Save nursing from the universities
There is no need for nursing to be a graduate only occupation
The afterlife of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko
Reflections on forty years since his death shook communist Poland
Season’s bleatings
Christmas is almost here, but our MPs are not in the festive spirit
Why the Democrats cannot be populists
It goes against the managerial nature of the party
Tory Utopias
1940s Conservatism was seething with creativity and optimism
Blue-collar brilliance
1970s Pittsburgh wasn’t just a steel town: it was the steel town
Killing democracy to save it?
The annulling of the first round of the Romanian presidential elections should concern us all
Art of the deal
A simple sale, with money changing hands, was out of the question
