Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator

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 are a railway journey. The video trailer offers no explanation — but, boy, they certainly threw some cash at their conceit. The pianist is dressed like a Russian anarchist, wandering wild-eyed through a railway carriage.

A hero bishop, a human disaster… and the Pachamama

What exactly is the role of a bishop – Catholic or Anglican – in the modern West? They spend a certain amount of time in church, of course, but what they love best is a committee meeting. And ‘dialogue’ with various groups. Sometimes they combine the two and have ‘mutually enriching dialogue’ at committee meetings.

Podcast: Why the Vatican is more corrupt than ever

As the world’s Catholic bishops meet in Rome to waffle about the problems of indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin, events in their own tribe have taken a dramatic turn. Last week, Vatican police raided the Church’s own money-laundering watchdog. Meanwhile, in a simultaneous raid on the Vatican Secretariat of State, prosecutors seized documents, computers,

Holy Smoke podcast: the strange religion of cryptocurrency

What can a global cryptocurrency scam tells us about the future of religion? That’s a strange question to ask, but the answer is: quite a lot. That’s because beliefs of all kinds, including quasi-religious faith in get-rich-quick schemes, are increasingly being shaped online – a phenomenon ignored by the mainstream churches as they slide into

How a sadistic Kremlin tormented Jewish musicians

The new episode of the Holy Smoke podcast looks at the cruel cat-and-mouse game that the Soviet Union played with Jewish classical musicians at a time when it was sneakily trying to extinguish both their religion and their ethnic identity. It’s prompted by the story of Maria Grinberg, the magnificent Russian Jewish pianist whose recorded

Cardinal Pell and the lies of Carl Beech

This week’s Holy Smoke podcast asks whether Cardinal George Pell, jailed in Australia for paedophile crimes, could have been the victim of a hoax. The possibility needs to be considered following the conviction in Britain of Carl Beech, formerly known as ‘Nick’, for inventing a non-existent Westminster sex ring in which VIPs supposedly raped and

Is Boris Johnson, baptised a Catholic, really a Christian?

In today’s Holy Smoke podcast, Harry Mount and I discuss the mysterious religious beliefs of the man who will be the first baptised Catholic to enter Number 10. Boris Johnson’s Catholic baptism – as a baby he was given the faith of his mother, Charlotte Fawcett – has received little publicity. Understandably, perhaps, because he

Why is big business so fanatically liberal?

This week’s Holy Smoke podcast is about the hypocrisy of ‘woke’ capitalism. Netflix, Disney and other corporations are both ruthlessly capitalist and ruthlessly liberal – at least when it comes to America. They’re throwing a fit because there’s been a conservative and Christian backlash against gruesome late-term abortions. They’ve also become risibly obsessed with Pride

Remembering my friend Claus von Bülow

There is a paperback on my bookshelves with an inscription from Claus von Bulow, who died this week. ‘To Damian,’ it reads, ‘who is also quite innocent.’ The title of the book? Insulin Murders. This may surprise anyone old enough to remember the tragedy and the two trials that made Claus notorious in the early

Life’s a Beach

At the Wigmore Hall last Friday, the Takacs String Quartet and Garrick Ohlsson played a piano quintet that was once revered as a masterpiece but then fell out of fashion and wasn’t heard for decades. It’s by Amy Beach, a name which always makes me smile because it looks so incongruous underneath her photograph. ‘Amy

All about that bass

Are Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’ Variations really ‘the greatest of all piano works’, as Alfred Brendel claims? It’s hardly what you would call received wisdom. Even Stephen Kovacevich, who has given us two visionary recordings of the Diabellis, thinks some of the 33 variations are ‘boring’. I don’t agree, but I can understand why Brendel’s judgment seems