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…
Cult classic
In Dan Brown’s new thriller, Origin, we are introduced to the Catholic church’s sinister far-right rival — a paranoid worldwide…
Make mine a double
If two concert pianists are performing a work written for two grand pianos, there are two ways you can position…
Losing our religion
Sir James MacMillan’s European Requiem, performed at the Proms on Sunday, isn’t about Brexit. The composer had to make this…
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
When you first encounter it, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis can sound like the Ninth Symphony with more singing but no tunes.…
Kissin in action
Is Evgeny Kissin, born in Moscow in 1971, the most famous concert pianist in the world? Probably not, if you…
Period drama
Harpsichordists are supposed to make love, not war: Sir Thomas Beecham famously compared the sound they make to ‘two skeletons…
Mission impossible?
Just before Peter Donohoe played the last of Alexander Scriabin’s ten piano sonatas at the Guildhall’s Milton Court on Sunday,…
