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Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson

The Spectator

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The knives are out for the conclave front-runner Parolin

previous day 4

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The extraordinary scale of the crisis facing the next pope

The extraordinary scale of the crisis facing the next pope
27.04.2025 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

‘I’ve seen controllers come and go’: Radio 3’s Michael Berkeley interviewed

‘I’ve seen controllers come and go’: Radio 3’s Michael Berkeley interviewed
24.04.2025 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The extraordinary scale of the crisis facing the next pope

The extraordinary scale of the crisis facing the next pope
24.04.2025 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Justin Welby has cemented his reputation – for having a tin ear

02.04.2025 4

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The Manchurian candidate / Does China have Vatican City in its sights?

26.03.2025 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The Manchurian candidate / Does China have Vatican City in its sights?

26.03.2025 6

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The Manchurian candidate / Does China have Vatican City in its sights?

21.03.2025 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Classical music / The filthy side of Dame Myra Hess

19.03.2025 4

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Classical music / The filthy side of Dame Myra Hess

13.03.2025 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The filthy side of Dame Myra Hess

13.03.2025 9

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Fascist shaman / Jonathan Bowden: my eccentric school friend who became a far-right hero

10.03.2025 20

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Fascist shaman / Jonathan Bowden: my eccentric school friend who became a far-right hero

06.03.2025 20

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Are these performances of the Bach cantatas the best on record?

13.02.2025 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

After life / My YouTube rabbit hole

13.01.2025 10

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

After life / My YouTube rabbit hole

13.01.2025 6

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

My YouTube rabbit hole

12.01.2025 6

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

After life / My YouTube rabbit hole

09.01.2025 20

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Classical music / Why is Fauré not more celebrated?

It is 100 years since the death of Gabriel Fauré, a composer whose spellbinding romantic tunes emerge from harmonies and rhythms that nudge us...

21.11.2024 4

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Dazzling: Marc-André Hamelin’s Hammerklavier

Grade: A When Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata was published in 1818, pianists were confronted with a mixture of ‘demonic energy and a torrent of...

21.11.2024 4

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Schoenberg owes his survival to crime drama

George Gershwin once made a home movie of Arnold Schoenberg grinning in a suit on his tennis court in Beverly Hills but, sadly, never filmed one of...

24.10.2024 9

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

Manacorda’s thrills and spills at Prom 72

At a Hollywood party in the 1940s, the garrulous socialite Elsa Maxwell spotted Arnold Schoenberg, then teaching music at UCLA, looking miserable....

19.09.2024 2

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The Stockhausen work that is worth braving

Grade: A- One of the best one-liners attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham refers to the stridently avant-garde Karlheinz Stockhausen: ‘I’ve never...

29.08.2024 40

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The Listener / The most exhilarating ‘authentic’ Mozart I’ve ever heard

Grade: A Yet another double bill of Mozart’s Piano Concertos 20 and 23! There’s an online database of 185 recordings of the first of these, the...

01.08.2024 2

The Spectator

Damian Thompson

The plotting to find the next Pope

The Hollywood adaptation of Conclave, Robert Harris’s thriller about a conspiracy to rig a papal election, won’t be in cinemas until November. But...

25.07.2024 3

The Spectator

Damian Thompson