Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
Enthralling eclecticism
Roberto Gerhard: Don Quixote, &c. (Chandos)
Piano in wartime
War poems (Somm)
Indulgent Italian treats
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Complete string quartets (Naxos)
Illicit fun
Jonathan Leibowitz: Eastern Reflections (Delphian)
Great big rain showers
C Schumann/Grieg: Piano concertos (Signum)
Giving Mozart a makeover
Mozart: The Salzburg Project (Warner)
Messing with the master’s work
Beethoven: Emperor Concerto; Brett Dean: A Winter’s Journey (Orchid)
Schoenberg’s morning and night
Arnold Schoenberg: Expressionist Music (Orchid)
Too measured for its own good
Lukas Foss: 1st symphony &c (Naxos)
Sensitivity of a high order
Sibelius and Prokofiev: Violin concertos (Decca)
Hatred without end
A year on from October 7th, mutual dehumanisation and refusal of moral responsibility characterises our “debate” over the Gaza war
Love, death and drink
Does inspiration really come out of a bottle?
In defence of hereditary peers
Starmer’s spiteful plan for the Lords breaks an important intergenerational contract
Donald Trump should not heed the call of foreign policy hawks
The world is not split neatly between good guys and bad guys
Killing time
Parliament is making the world a better place, one death at a time
The empty road to serfdom
“Vision Zero” is a tyrannical anti-driving dream
Procedural Man
The Process is good, the Process is correct, no matter what, trust the Process
The Lost Gardens of London
The war between city and greenery is eternal; the concrete and asphalt seeks open land to engulf
Tierless? (Starmer’s version)
Taxpayer-funded escorts for celebrities, criminal neighbours for normal Brits
Shiva Naipaul
The younger brother of a controversial Nobel Prize winner who has been unjustly overlooked
When the music stopped
A reflection on the inexorable decline of arts education and the rise of knee-jerk politics and managerialism
