Music
Honky-tonking around
Yuja Wang: The American Album (DG)
Excellence for everyone
What does the BBC have against classical music?
A welter of emotions
Rachmaninov: 2nd symphony (Chandos/Vox)
Vinyl solution
Vinyl’s comeback is down to a desire for a tangible point of contact with a performer
Beyond satire
Opera North and English Touring Opera have plied an honourable trade without trying to gain kudos
My perfect castaway
Robin Ashenden whiled away a forced sojourn in Georgia by feasting on the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs and compiling a list of his favourite guests
Outwards and inwards
Drawing the ear into every era of western music
The missing dimension
Warning: contains passages of symphonic transcendence
Midnight’s mass
Taylor Swift’s talent for ordinariness that makes her the most exceptional artist at work today
Not so easy listening
Janacek, Brahms, Bartok: Violin sonatas (Alpha-Classics/Outhere)
Winning the argument, losing the country
Winning debates is all well and good, but it does not represent political progress
Elgar’s excellence
Elgar: Symphonies (Halle/Oehms)
Diversity is not our strength
The Khan Review reveals a society needlessly splintered along ethno-religious lines
A Good Read should be better
Some weeks there are comedians and groovy journalists — others it’s groovy journalists and comedians
The meaning of Navalny’s death
This tragic event illustrates the cruelty and fragility of the Kremlin
Were lockdowns ethical?
Questionable benefits were emphasised above obvious and dramatic harms
Death by a thousand regulations
British politicians are allowing unnecessary laws to ruin civil society
Hellenism in Rome
Children of Athens is an absorbing romp through Greek (and Roman) history
My husband and Zoe
Claudia Savage-Gore is irked by her man’s latest obsession
Miriam Cates is right about surrogacy
It is a fundamentally dishonest and exploitative practice
Britain must develop economic resilience
The Houthis have exposed our devastating economic insecurity
