Norman Lebrecht
An unreviewable album
The music is beautiful; the context is not
An epochal set
Nielsen: The Symphonies (DG)
Pain, poise and passion
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: String quartets 1-3 (Naxos)
A major talent
Missy Mazzoli: Dark with excessive bright (BIS)
Honky-tonking around
Yuja Wang: The American Album (DG)
A welter of emotions
Rachmaninov: 2nd symphony (Chandos/Vox)
Unveiled enigmas
Shostakovich: Works unveiled (BIS)
Beethoven’s piano maker
Album of the Week: Nannette Streicher’s Fortepiano (Gramola)
Instruments of shock and awe
Jean Sibelius/Arne Nordheim; The Tempest (Naxos/LAWO)
Englishness with an aftertaste
The pleasures of cowpats
British defence must be renewed
War may not be imminent but Britain must still be secure
Go woke, go broke?
The collapse of Vice Media is a story of an American left — aggressive, iconoclastic, irreverent — that no longer exists
The ongoing reality of Russian imperialism
People rationalising Russian military intervention are betraying their ignorance of Russian history
He’ll never let the old flag fall
Lee Anderson will never stand for insult, especially the insult of never being invited round for dinner
The glorious Ninth
Relive the moments when music changed forever
Britain is still safe for Jews
It may be far from perfect — but where would be safer?
How capitalism gave women leisure
Feminist anti-capitalists are spinning delusions about economic history
Why the Voice failed
The Australian establishment has been too focused on symbolic gestures rather than practical change
Postcards from before the war
It is no longer possible to reflect upon Israeli culture as if the “Question of Palestine” could be brushed aside
The war on noticing in modern Britain
How DEI initiatives and the worldview behind them dull people’s natural perceptiveness
Train lines to nowhere
The farcical naming of new overground lines has exposed the fragility of progressivism
