Classical Music
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Cello Concerto (CPO)
If Norman Lebrecht goes a month without hearing Weinberg he feels the loss
Britten, Hindemith, RVW, Martinu (Claves)
The 1934 suite by Ralph Vaughan Williams demands a sympathy for the rolling contours of the English countryside
Theodorakis and Christou: Intersection 1955
The Ballad of Mauthausen ranks among the most beautiful music ever written about the Nazi Holocaust
Nikolai Kapustin, Alfred Schnittke: Cello Concertos (Capriccio)
I can imagine Kapustin in the background, smiling at his piano, during this breath-taking revival
Christopher Rouse: 5th symphony (Naxos)
What Rouse wrote was an intimate series of love letters to the orchestra
Two lost composers
Feinberg / Winterberg: The lost works (Melism)
Ravel, Dutilleux, Debussy: Quart de nuit (Deux-Elles)
Norman Lebrecht is left wanting more Dutilleux
How I discovered classical music
Daniel Johnson describes the joy of indulging in music as a teenage boy
Alexander Zemlinsky: The Mermaid (Pentatone)
Norman Lebrecht breaks a rule in his review of The Mermaid
An essential record
Norman Lebrecht reviews Shostakovich: Violin concertos 1&2, performed by Alina Ibragimova and the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia
Crisis, what crisis?
The Spring Budget was a shameless manifesto of complacency and managed decline
The crisis in the universities
A Critic panel brought light as well as heat to the troubled question of higher education
Down the primrose WPATH
Responsible medical authorities must reject the dangerous nonsense of gender-affirming care
Google has a history problem
As much as we might wish that history had been different, virtue cannot grow from the soil of falsehood
A real pea souper
Rivers of filth bear our merry band to the grotesque wonders of Dickensian London
A dentist’s appointment for Liam
Rishi discovers he is more appealing to the voters when he’s not there
Police Scotland must stop patronising the public
The Hate Crime And Public Order Act will waste the time of the police and endanger the freedoms of the public
Humza Yousaf, global citizen
Britain needs one, and only one, foreign policy
Scratches in the stonework of history
A new history of graffiti and rebellion is less light and bawdy than one may have expected
“Trad” theatre can still feel fresh
West End strikes a balance between keeping their spine and nostalgic appeal, whilst avoiding creakiness
Two sides of the weird frontier
The archly neutral now stands on the margins, looking out at a society of fear and outrage
