Norman Lebrecht
Modernism for the many
Lutoslawski: Concerto for Orchestra, Partita &c (Ondine)
Album of the year
The best of an inspiringly musical 2023
Music of hypnotic power
Thomas Larcher: The Living Mountain (ECM New Series)
A conviction singer who convinces
Folk Songs: Magdalena Kozena/Simon Rattle (Pentatone)
A Wodehousian pick-me-up
Noel Coward and Friends: A Marvellous Party (Signum Classics)
Christmas, irresistibly
Lise Davidsen: Christmas from Norway (Decca)/Miracle of Miracles (Cedille)
Notes of promise
Bruce Liu: Waves (Deutsche Grammophon)
A celebration of redemption
Handel: Israel in Egypt (Avie)
The world’s last measured moments
Joseph Haydn: Symphonies 93-95
A chronicle of gratitude and ambivalence
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: 12th symphony/Dawn (Chandos)
The strange death of the Office for Place
The demise of the Office for Place is a missed opportunity for housing
Tawdry tales
The Tales of Hoffmann, Royal Opera House
Hoop dreams
Football turned out to be a poor way of shirking parental duties
Explaining reality to Ed Miliband
You can’t ban baking and eat cake
When the music stopped
A reflection on the inexorable decline of arts education and the rise of knee-jerk politics and managerialism
Hot desking
We, the special advisers of the Labour Party, seek justice!
The rise of suburbia
The English experiment in liminal living
November Letters
Aiming for the rescue and rebuilding of liberal capitalism
The grim quasi-religious doctrine of “unconscious bias training”
Baroness Royall’s commitment to the idea should concern Oxford students, academics and administrators
The problem with petty scandals
They distract us from state failure and institutional decay
The Bezos behemoth
Behind the logistics miracle are some troubling stories
