Music
Time to learn new tunes
Classical music outfits must be open about their carbon footprints
Who’s the next Mr Preview?
Today’s anonymous conductors could take a leaf out of André Previn’s crowd-pleasing book
Virtuosos of the written word
Only a few great composers are equally gifted writers: their work can be sacred or hatefully profane
The adoration of the Maestro
The Concertgebouw’s trailblazing conductor sublimated his libido in worship of Hitler and Mussolini
Describing the indescribable
Few of even the greatest writers have managed to capture the emotional, elusive, essence of music
The threepenny opera boom
Inspirational amateur companies are flourishing, yet damned as elitist by London’s culture czars
Women storm the podium
In classical music nothing happens overnight, but the rise of female conductors marks a massive change
There’s nowt so fake as “folk”
The Scots, Welsh and Irish have an authentic tradition of folk songs. England demonstrably does not
Not in front of the children
The London staging of Hänsel und Gretel was far superior to Berlin’s ludicrously bad production
Dancing to the SNP’s tunes
Scottish music and culture is playing second fiddle to an increasingly nationalist and socialist agenda
Tolerating the intolerant
“For those who thought that a global pandemic would sound the death knell for identity politics, think again”
How to prevent the next pandemic
‘I have been reporting as a science journalist for years that the world is at increasing risk of pandemics like this; that this was predicted; that we know what we need to do to prepare and we simply haven’t done it; and that more and worse pandemics are coming so we need to do that, now’
D’où parles-tu? The post-truth world
Power, illusion and the open society: how postmodernism undermines our foundational concepts