The real reason for Pope Francis’s disgraceful Pompeo snub
Why did Pope Francis refuse to meet Secretary Pompeo in Rome this week? The obvious answer is that he didn’t…
What does Kamala Harris really believe?
When Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, the Religion News Service reported that she ‘now considers herself…
Beethoven 32 piano sonatas were his musical laboratory – here are the best recordings
If you want to understand Beethoven, listen to his piano sonatas. Without them, you’ll never grasp how the same man…
Is Black Lives Matter a religion for woke white people?
The most memorable footage of the Black Lives Matter protests, and perhaps the creepiest, doesn’t capture any acts of violence,…
Fake news is spreading faster than the virus
The uncontainable spread of fake coronavirus news
The Pope rebuffs his liberal supporters by rejecting married priests
Pope Francis today issued his official response to October’s ‘Amazon Synod’, which discussed a plan to ordain married men in…
Beethoven wasn’t just history’s greatest composer but also one of its greatest human beings
Ludwig van Beethoven isn’t just my favourite composer: he’s my household god. There’s a bust of him on my mantelpiece.…
The cult of Trifonov is doing the pianist no favours
Grade: B– Deutsche Grammophon have decided that Daniil Trifonov’s new Rachmaninov piano concertos with the Philadephia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin…
In his new piano concerto Thomas Ades’s inspiration has completely dried up
There’s nothing like a good piano concerto and, sad to relate, Thomas Adès’s long-awaited first proper attempt at the genre…
If Richard Dawkins loves facts so much, why can’t he get them right?
Professor Richard Dawkins has written a book called Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. Its aim is to save children and…
Why did the Soviets not want us to know about the pianist Maria Grinberg?
Only four women pianists have recorded complete cycles of the Beethoven piano sonatas: Maria Grinberg, Annie Fischer, H. J. Lim…
How radical Islam taught the progressive Left to blame the Jews
It’s less than four years since Jeremy Corbyn’s hard-left sect seized control of the Labour Party, and yet already its…
The forgotten masterpieces of Amy Beach
At the Wigmore Hall last Friday, the Takacs String Quartet and Garrick Ohlsson played a piano quintet that was once…
Anderszewski went at Beethoven’s Diabellis with a nail gun
Are Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations really ‘the greatest of all piano works’, as Alfred Brendel claims? It’s hardly what you would…
25 years off the booze has taught me three simple things
Have you noticed how nearly everyone in the media has won an award? Is there even such a thing as…
An exposé of high-ranking gays in the Catholic Church bears the fingerprints of the Pope’s closest advisors
The publication of In the Closet of the Vatican by the French gay polemicist Frédéric Martel has been meticulously timed…
Happy Birthday, Blue Peter
Every Monday and Thursday afternoon when I was growing up, a drum roll would sound throughout suburban Britain. ‘Damian? Blue…
J.S. Bach v. Joan Baez
I was at a funeral the other day at which the music was so inspiring that I struggled to feel…
What has Pope Francis covered up?
The Catholic Church is confronting a series of interconnected scandals so shameful that its very survival is threatened. Pope Francis…
Classical music is awash with virtue-signalling
All my life I’ve wanted to compose music, and now I’ve done it. I’ve written a sonata for solo flute…
Pope Francis raises the white flag
Just before Ireland voted overwhelmingly to end the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, Catholics in the fishing village of Clogherhead…
Mozart died too late rather than too early. Discuss.
Glenn Gould used to say that Mozart died too late rather than too early. The remark was intended to get…
Remembering one of the best – and bitchiest – pianists who ever lived
I’m unlucky with Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. Twice in the past year I’ve bolted for the exit as soon the pianist…
Momentum isn’t hard left. It’s a theatrical cult
Hard left, my arse. Sorry to be vulgar, but surely that’s how Jim Royle, couch-potato patriarch of that glorious sitcom…
Composer Nico Muhly on drugs, cults and James MacMillan
There’s a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie in which Tippi Hedren is emptying a safe while a cleaning lady silently…