Classical Music
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
Franco-Irish vigour
Augusta Holmès: Symphonic poems (CPO)
Forces of nature
Antonin Dvorak: Symphonies (Warner/Pentatone)
A full musical meal
An unforgettable concert experience
Illicit fun
Jonathan Leibowitz: Eastern Reflections (Delphian)
Messing with the master’s work
Beethoven: Emperor Concerto; Brett Dean: A Winter’s Journey (Orchid)
Anger and intuition
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: String quartets 6, 13, 15 (Chandos)
Schoenberg’s morning and night
Arnold Schoenberg: Expressionist Music (Orchid)
Too measured for its own good
Lukas Foss: 1st symphony &c (Naxos)
The 300 Years’ War
How conflict over land ownership shaped conflict over Ireland
The authoritarian populism of Keir Starmer
This government is anything but technocratic
The UK’s war on free speech
Street violence is being met with restrictions on online speech by a Labour government desperate to clamp down on opinion
Will Starmer suppress dissent?
The riots should not be an excuse for a broader assault on civil liberties
Farewell to Larry Siedentop
The great political philosopher, Oxford don, and sage defender of Western liberalism
Pilot, playboy, player
This portrait of a gifted and not particularly pleasant man adds another feather to the author’s hat
Anti-extremism or opportunism?
The UK government should be more careful to distinguish criminal activities from legitimate opinion
Confessions of a Melbourne Bus-Fare Evader
I am become bus, destroyer of bourgeois class consciousness
EDI corrodes the rule of law
Embedding EDI in the work of barristers makes for bad law, not a good society
The death of Britannia Agoraia
Deindustrialisation has done damage even beyond the realms of economics
No average Joe
“He looked like the Milkybar Kid but played like Clint Eastwood”
