Music
Nastasia Khrushcheva: Normal Music (Melodiya)
In troubled times for Russia, this album hints at the future of the country’s music
Unfinished? Don’t start!
A new project to restore Beethoven’s incomplete symphony borders on pathological necromancy
In my ears and in my eyes
The Lyrics: the autobiography Paul McCartney never wrote
Money doesn’t smell
What’s the point of refusing Sackler funds for concert halls?
Unexpected music and a crisis of theology
The Critic Narrated: Episode Six, with Sarah Ditum and David Scullion
The unusual, the unsigned, the uncategorisable
Hip-hop has its place, but not necessarily on an alternative daytime radio station
Lana chameleon
Pitchfork was one of a whole ecosystem of taste-making blogs which laid claim to being the ones who had made del Rey
Paul Hindemith: Mathis symphony (Naxos), Clarinet concerto (Orfeo)
When asked “which Hindemith should I try first?”, I’m lost for an answer
London Nights (Capriccio)
Intelligent and well played though it is, Franziska Lee’s album of Londonoid piano pieces can’t make a bad sonata better
Spare us the skintight sonata
If Yuja Wang were to strip everything right down to the music, she could be a sensation
Very naughty boys
Progressive parenting is all very well but sometimes misbehaviour needs a firmer approach
Jamie Tradescant: highbrow sports journalist
Jamie’s articles are not simply a riot of historical and philosophical allusions — no, they are all about style
Britain will not be a “Christian country” without Christians
Traditions die if there is no one to cherish them
A time for restoration
An interview with David Starkey
Unpacking neurodivergence and gender identity
Neurodivergent teenagers are in danger of having their struggles miscategorised
Netherworld
The Dutch golden age could be anything but for the painters
When classicists attack classics
Sanskrit isn’t the only ancient language to be affected by academic imperialism
The crisis in the universities
A Critic panel brought light as well as heat to the troubled question of higher education
The Midas touch
The kind of skill that makes the breath catch in thousands of throats at once
Killing with kindness
“Be kind” culture has abandoned adolescent girls
Tragedy of the common spaces
It is sadly in keeping with the modern British mindset to prefer something good not to be done
