Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
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)
Surprise and tension
Czech Songs: Magdalena Kozena (Pentatone)
Elgar’s excellence
Elgar: Symphonies (Halle/Oehms)
In praise of the viola
Cantabile: Anthems for viola (Delphian)
Musical no man’s lands
Two violin concertos fail to inspire
Playfulness and tedium
Stravinsky, Petrushka; Debussy, Jeux and Prelude (Decca)
A talented pianist and a battered piano
Bezhod Abduraimov: Shadows of my ancestors (Alpha-Classics)
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
Wilde times at the country house
Gerald Barry’s outrageous The Importance of Being Earnest manages to overmatch the virtuoso original
A revolutionary king
The monarch’s vision of “harmony” will have lasting impact
Hey, Starmer, leave those kids alone
Banning under-16s from social media is more prohibitionist stupidity
The Muslim modernisers
Muslim reformers do not innovate; they renew by seeking to mend what is broken
Lebanon’s finest
Henry Jeffreys savours some reds and whites from the Bekaa valley
Nice Tice
Can Richard Tice clean up Reform’s image? Or a park?
We must save the right to smoke
Liberals must not put down the sword against paternalism
Antisemitism and the Islamic connection
Antisemitic sentiments in Islamic theology cannot be overlooked or obscured
Why the establishment hates X
It can be used to spread misinformation and abuse, yes, but it can also expose inconvenient facts
Our AI overlords will end bigotry
Bring on the machines
Running out of autobahn
Beijing’s manufacturing strategy is colliding with Europe’s self-inflicted industrial weaknesses