Classical Music
Too measured for its own good
Lukas Foss: 1st symphony &c (Naxos)
Sensitivity of a high order
Sibelius and Prokofiev: Violin concertos (Decca)
Finnish on a high note
Now, how the Helsinki has this happened?
Surprise and tension
Czech Songs: Magdalena Kozena (Pentatone)
Word pictures at a gallery
Paintings are appreciated best when there are few people around to spoil the view
Well-behaved Beethoven
Beethoven: Triple concerto and British folksongs (Decca)
Polish strings
Grazyna Bacewicz: Symphonies 3 &4; Concerto for string orchestra (both on Chandos)
The glorious Ninth
Relive the moments when music changed forever
And the band played on
Cash crisis in the arts — what’s new?
Musical no man’s lands
Two violin concertos fail to inspire
Two-tier immigration?
Britain has its border priorities out of whack
Bitter progress
How English towns developed post-war — not always for the better
November Letters
Aiming for the rescue and rebuilding of liberal capitalism
Shattered illusions
The record of the authorities defies denials of two-tier policing
Piano in wartime
War poems (Somm)
The right to learn at home
Home education is a powerful alternative to the box-ticking of state schooling
Don’t idolise Roger Scruton
Our reverence for the late thinker must not limit our imaginations
Portugal and the missing goats
The roots of environmental disasters can be odder than they look
Are we being misled on Georgia?
Claims of electoral fraud are serious — but they have not been substantiated
Why can’t there be more vampires?
Bloodsucking, in various more or less metaphorical guises, is after all opera’s happiest place
Boris the Innocent
The Johnsonian lexicon has yet to incorporate the word “responsibility”
