Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
Album of the year?
György Kurtág: Játékok (Pentatone)
Pure pleasure
Maurice Ravel: Complete solo piano music (Chandos), Complete songs (Signum)
Jenufa’s body
Zlatomir Fung: Fantasies (Signum)/Stephen Sondheim: Chamber music (Bridge)
Sheer sensual pleasure
Fatma Said: Lieder (Warner Classics)
A full-blooded blow-out
Kurt Weill: Symphonies, Seven Deadly Sins (DG)
Lebrecht’s Album of the Year
Not just a great record but an essential one
Not a dull phrase
Ethel Smyth: 2nd sonata &c (Delphian)
Exilic yearnings
Miklos Rozsa: violin concerto (LSO Live)
Impressive yet unmoving
Franz Schmidt: 4 symphonies (Naxos)
Hi-energy nutrients
Schoenfield, Vivier, Bartok &c (Accentus 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
What if the AI bubble bursts?
Arguing that an AI bubble is a good thing reeks of techno-optimist complacency
Critical briefing: cuckooing
A hidden scourge has been plaguing British streets for too long
The real problem with rigmarole
A journalistic focus on proceduralism distracts us from deeper political questions
Heart of darkness
Alexander Adams encounters an unflinching master of sex and death in Vienna
Populism in its purest form
Nigel Farage is rallying his voters to defend his right not to be asked inconvenient questions about his money
The Boston barbarians
The Boston Symphony acted like a New Orleans nightclub owner with a recalcitrant pole-dancer
A below-par Riley is still better than most
The Palm House by
Gwendoline Riley; My Death by Lisa
Tuttle; Still Talking by Lore Segal
Beware the British ICE
Mass deportation of Muslims will not solve antisemitism, but feed feelings of alienation
Tasty tunes
The Chocolate Soldier, Opera della Luna, Wilton’s Music Hall
The missing variable in the masculinity crisis
The literature on masculinity ignores the most obvious factor of all: a steady, civilisational fall in testosterone
Laughing to hide the tears
Beware: prime ministerial jokes ahead