Classical Music
The Sea! The Sea!
Southbank Sinfonia Baroque at St John’s Smith Square
Pomp and circumstance
A Venetian Coronation, The Gabrieli Consort, St John’s Smith Square
Musical scores
Great passages of play evoke great music
Allan Pettersson: Barefoot songs (BIS)
Sweden scorned the composer who could have been its greatest
Before and after gould
Bach’s Goldberg Variations have a rich history that far transcend its modern association with Glenn Gould
The sound of love
Robert Schumann expresses the intense passion and despair of true love better than any other composer
Sibelius: 7 symphonies and Tapiola (Decca)
A fresh, ambitious and daring approach to the familiar Finn
Sounds and sweet airs
Classical music is flourishing in Britain — though if you listened to our cultural elite you’d never know it
Bring on the big beasts
Music needs heavyweight champions to stand up for truth and excellence
Gustav Mahler: 4th symphony (Pentatone)
A new recording of Mahler’s smallest symphony is “indispensable” to connoisseurs of his music
Don’t trust the Runnymede Trust
The law is too indulgent of political charities
Non-euclidean Toryism
The Conservative Party appears somewhat lost
The perversity of the Oasis reunion
The cultural optimism of the nineties has been lost
Junk food? More like junk statistics
New claims about the costs of obesity are wildly exaggerated
British industry has forgotten how to use its voice
Corporate cowards are not standing up to the government
Tragedy, comedy and an Italian parable
Three great novels capture a moment of change for society
The monumental cradles of democracy
Squeezed into a single large volume, readers can now find a remarkable account of the Greek city
The West should stop indulging delusions on Ukraine
Ukraine cannot achieve its maximal goals
Britain is at breaking point
The UK is experiencing existential challenges, but neither elitists nor populists offer a solution
The Club of Wrong
The Club of Rome are back and dumber than ever
Debunking the decline deniers
Armed police at Christmas markets are a bad sign however you look at it
