Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
Metamorphosen (Chandos)
John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London reinterpret Metamorphosen chillingly as elegy
Ligeti and Kodaly: Lux Aeterna (OUR Recordings)
The otherworldly and the down-to-earth
Harrison Birtwistle: Chamber works (BIS)
The British composer — still writing at 87 years of age — is an acquired taste
Schulhoff, Popov: String quartets (QBT)
A Baedeker tour of Europe’s miseries, amidst the outrage in Ukraine
Joyce DiDonato: Eden (Erato); Asmik Grigorian: Rachmaninov (Alpha)
This is singing as mildly polemical conversation, from her to us
Grazyna Bacewicz: Piano works (Ondine)
One would never imagine Stalinist oppression was raging all around her
Nastasia Khrushcheva: Normal Music (Melodiya)
In troubled times for Russia, this album hints at the future of the country’s music
Brahms: Clarinet sonatas (BIS), French clarinet music (Delphian)
Three sonatas by Brahms? The clarinet adaptation, to no surprise, doesn’t work
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber symphonies 2&4
Weinberg is an absolute master of intimated emotion
Pohadka (Chandos)
The Czechs always have talent to spare on the bench
Labour is killing British farming
Attacks on British agriculture must be resisted
Don’t bite the hand that feeds the birds
The government’s flawed biodiversity analysis endangers successful state-funded schemes
Ultra processed arguments
Public health commentators cannot seem to decide what is safe to eat
Less than the sum of its parts
Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera
The grim quasi-religious doctrine of “unconscious bias training”
Baroness Royall’s commitment to the idea should concern Oxford students, academics and administrators
The monumental cradles of democracy
Squeezed into a single large volume, readers can now find a remarkable account of the Greek city
The afterlife of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko
Reflections on forty years since his death shook communist Poland
The EU is leaving Britain behind on immigration
The continent is waking up to the need for solutions, and Britain must wake up as well
Knife-edge of the Western world
Vilnius is a serene western capital on a critical eastern frontier
We must resurrect the symphony
Or the orchestra will die with it
Tom Stoppard’s Hampstead drama
Best not try to memorise this deceptive Connect Four of relationships — just get into the flow
