Classical Music
Busoni’s legacy
The best of him is found in the piano concerto
Stories worth telling
Untold Stories (Hyperion)
A macabre sense of humour
Ligeti, Bartok: String quartets (BIS)
A full-blooded blow-out
Kurt Weill: Symphonies, Seven Deadly Sins (DG)
Subscribe to save the BBC
A radical new solution to the problem of the BBC’s outmoded licence fee that could ensure more high-quality programming
Too many silences in this book about music
The hazy treatment of what “music” even entails falls flat
All gone to look for America
The show is a mishmash, in need of some pruning and a sharper edge
Lebrecht’s Album of the Year
Not just a great record but an essential one
The tragedy of Radio 3
The centenary “celebration” of the BBC Singers summed up everything that has gone wrong
Worthy instrument
York Bowen, Willam Walton: Viola concertos (SWR Music)
Most Read
Tame Impala fails to impress
unconquered by a
taste of Crusader food
Gary Stevenson is wrong about wealth taxes
The popular economist is irritating, but more importantly he is mistaken
Why they hated Ann Widdecombe
Fair-minded people could agree or disagree with her opinions. Left-wing bigots hated her for not abandoning them
What is wrong now was wrong before
Julia Gillard should not pretend that the “unintended consequences” of the gender debate were unknowable
Ethnic minorities are abandoning Labour
It is not just Muslim voters who have been abandoning the Labour Party
The global migration compact trap
The UN migration compact may be non-binding, but its political effects are very real
Stop saying sectarianism
Britain’s emerging politics are not really sectarian at all, but the result of neo-communal fragmentation
Smart but ill-suited
Michael Anton was too good for the administrations that he helped to create
Itamar Ben-Gvir, heel
The Israeli demagogue is a bleak but interesting model of a modern politician
In the trenches
Hannah Betts considers whether the
classic trench coat is the GOAT
Wilde times at the country house
Gerald Barry’s outrageous The Importance of Being Earnest manages to overmatch the virtuoso original
Is Keir Starmer failing?
To fail at something, he would have to do something
The miracle of the magical migrants
Is a man’s identity is fluid when he steps on British soil, but calcified on African soil?
Manchesterism is dead in the water
Andy Burnham already appears to have abandoned hope for meaningful change
Gruesome twosomes
Considering culinary mismatches
Escape to the country
Some tractor-acceptance meditation might help with moving day