Classical Music
Hope and stories
Bicinia (Claves)
A bore and a balm
Inferno: Behzod Abdurimov (Alpha Classics)
Getting a handle on Handel
Robert Thicknesse and friends reflect on Handel and his heyday
Alkan the Awesome
Alkan: Complete organ works, vol. 1 (Signum Classics)
Classical musicians should spread their wings
We need more collaboration and more experimentation for classical music to flourish
Vivid nostalgia
The Cunning Little Vixen, Irish National Opera, Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo
A heavyweight companion for life
Music’s vast dismembered brocade enchants practitioners and listeners alike
This century’s Great Composers
Hidden masterminds may yet revive the species
Wanted: classical music influencers
Expert, well-dressed, wisecracking reviewers once delivered first-night juice
Let’s hear it for early music
Competence unencumbered by ideological fog or bureaucratic sprawl
Most Read
The martyrdom of Young Bob
On ebbing power of the political influencer
Grooming gangs and the truth
We should not give ammunition to deniers of the grooming gangs scandal
Babies need women
Leaving children with only men who are not their parents is foolish and dangerous
Stop ignoring the Islamisation of our democracy
The British state is bending to Islamism, not attempting to defeat it
Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?
He was the perfect embodiment of a failing system
Amazing Grace? Meh, it was OK
If there is a reason to see this play, it is Ralph Fiennes
The UK’s messiest election ever?
Trying to predict the results of the next election is a mug’s game
Squeezing out your generation
New laws are harming, not helping, younger people
The RAM should face the music
Why the Royal Academy of Music shuts of pupils from private schools
A Laboured response
Keir Starmer and his advocates are all out of ideas
No gods, no monsters
We should stop projecting our neuroses onto foreign leaders
Exile and exaltation
Bohuslav Martinu: The Symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon)
The ballad of Robbie and Harry
Sometimes, the struggle can become the art
The costs of independence
Northern Ireland offers sobering lessons on the consequences of devolutionary radicalism
Knowingly crass and conflicted
This American culture is hegemonic because even to steal from it is to propel it
We need to make a better case against Magic Monetary Theory
Simplistic rebuttals help MMT endure. We need better arguments