Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
Tigran Mansurian: Con anima (ECM New Series)
You may find that Con anima is one of the best ways of spending the next 15 minutes of your life
Dear Mademoiselle (Alpha)
Mademoiselle was not much of a composer, too set on correct form to allow the flight of inspiration
Eighth Blackbird and Navarra String Quartet
I’m not giving up trying to persuade younger people to listen to new composers
Franz Schmidt: 4th symphony (Berliner Philharmoniker recordings)
This is music that is going nowhere
Leo Weiner: Divertimentos (Naxos)
Music from the Hungarian educator who shaped the sound of the modern American orchestra
Nostalgia – The Sea of Memories (Accent)
A marvellous blend of early Baroque and Mediterranean traditional songs
Christopher Rouse: 5th symphony (Naxos)
What Rouse wrote was an intimate series of love letters to the orchestra
An essential record
Norman Lebrecht reviews Shostakovich: Violin concertos 1&2, performed by Alina Ibragimova and the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia
Where is so much gender confusion coming from?
The scope of inquiry into gender and young people should be expanded to schools
The Boy who never grew old
Eric Ravilious’s ethereal watercolours chime with today’s sensibilities
The darkness of assisted dying
The desire to end terrible pain is understandable — but the dangers are severe
Britain is still safe for Jews
It may be far from perfect — but where would be safer?
Dumb, glum and zero-sum
British thinking has to value supply more than distribution
Higher education, lower standards
Why are our universities in decline?
Stop blaming Brexit for Britain’s economic ills
It is not only wrong — it distracts us from our real problems
Poor old Carmen
This update of a classic from the Royal Opera House is a reminder of why messing with great pieces is so risky
Therapy is making children ill
What would really help children’s mental health is talk about resilience
Less will be better
More students have been worse. Some became dons — they have been worse too
Hatred and mental illness are not mutually exclusive
Violent men being mentally ill need not make broader societal phenomena irrelevant
