Norman Lebrecht
An enemy of the best
Nothing routine, showy or ill-considered
A hundred shades of autumn leaves
He grips the attention with every phrase
The missing dimension
Warning: contains passages of symphonic transcendence
Playing that pulls no punches
Kholodenko is in the elite of classical pianists
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Sixth Symphony (Hyperion/ICA Classics)
As shattering as any work of its era
Gustav Mahler: 5th symphony (Pentatone)
Its ethos in Mahler remains inimitable
Jean Sibelius: Orchestral songs (LAWO)
The themes are cruel and cold
John Adams: Slonimsky’s Earbox (Alpha)
Among his best work
John Cage: Four Walls (Fuga Libera)
More than a little bit mad
How Australia punished smokers and normalised firebombs
Smoking restrictions have fuelled the Australian tobacco wars
Countdown to energy apocalypse
What will happen when the wind doesn’t blow?
Two-tier immigration?
Britain has its border priorities out of whack
Twilight of the hacks
“A Very Royal Scandal” and the emptiness of modern journalism
My “state of the nation” book
England’s Mean Unpleasant Land: How the Tories, Trump and TikTok Screwed Up Britain
Progressive realism
Can Labour’s new foreign policy doctrine work in our troubled world?
Much more than mere child’s play
Children’s literature is the platform on which everything else is built
The US is getting what it wants in the Middle East
Israeli escalations against Hezbollah are not defiance but an extension of U.S. strategy
When the music stopped
A reflection on the inexorable decline of arts education and the rise of knee-jerk politics and managerialism
Ministry of Silly Thoughts
Wes Streeting made the grave error of consulting the British people
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The magic of the original stubbornly refused to rise from the dead and save the movie from mediocrity
