Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator

Beethoven: Missa solemnis

When you first encounter it, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis can sound like the Ninth Symphony with more singing but no tunes. But the more I listen to it, the more I agree with the composer that it’s his greatest work — or, at least, up there with the last two piano sonatas and his String Quartet

Kissin in action

Is Evgeny Kissin, born in Moscow in 1971, the most famous concert pianist in the world? Probably not, if you stretch the definition of ‘concert pianist’ to encompass the circus antics of Lang Lang, the 34-year-old Chinese virtuoso who — in the words of a lesser-known but outstandingly gifted colleague — ‘can play well but

Period drama

Harpsichordists are supposed to make love, not war: Sir Thomas Beecham famously compared the sound they make to ‘two skeletons copulating on a tin roof’. But now two masters of the instrument, the Iranian-American Mahan Esfahani and the German Andreas Staier, are locked in mortal combat. For connoisseurs of finely tuned insults, it’s riveting stuff.

Mission impossible?

Just before Peter Donohoe played the last of Alexander Scriabin’s ten piano sonatas at the Guildhall’s Milton Court on Sunday, the autograph score of the piece was beamed on to the wall behind him. It was just a glimpse —- but enough to show us that Scriabin had the most beautiful musical calligraphy of any

Are you scared to talk about your faith at work?

Religious believers feel nervous about expressing their faith at work – either by wearing symbols or talking about religion. They’re worried they’ll be mocked by secular bullies. And employers aren’t aware of the situation. Or don’t care. That’s the implication of a new ComRes report, which I’m discussing on this week’s Holy Smoke with my new co-presenter

Persecuted Iraqi Christians ‘supported Trump 100 per cent’ because they felt betrayed by Obama

There’s an extraordinary moment in this week’s Holy Smoke podcast when the aid official supervising the resettlement of 12,000 Iraqi Christians says that the latter supported Donald Trump ‘100 per cent’ in the US elections because they felt betrayed by the Obama administration. Stephen Rasche, legal counsel and head of resettlement programmes for the Chaldean Catholics of

All’s well that ends well | 23 March 2017

There’s a moment in the finale of Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata when the frenzied piano writing turns unexpectedly jolly. The late Antony Hopkins described it as a bit of an anticlimax, ‘a little too near to the traditional Gypsy Dance that appears so often in the less probable 19th-century opera’. I’m not sure whether I agree

The plot against the Pope | 12 March 2017

On the first Saturday in February, the people of Rome awoke to find the city covered in peculiar posters depicting a scowling Pope Francis. Underneath were written the words: Ah, Francis, you have intervened in Congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals… but where is your

The plot against the Pope

On the first Saturday in February, the people of Rome awoke to find the city covered in peculiar posters depicting a scowling Pope Francis. Underneath were written the words: Ah, Francis, you have intervened in Congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals… but where is your

The Queen is a true Christian leader. But what about Prince Charles, who seems more interested in worshipping himself?

Every time I suggest on social media that the Queen is Britain’s most inspiring Christian leader, there’s a chorus of agreement – with Catholic voices among the loudest, interestingly. Churchgoers in this country have noticed that Her Majesty is quietly uncompromising about her beliefs; her Christmas message doesn’t skate over the teaching that the infant

Is Trump turning Islam into America’s ‘Great Satan’?

President Trump has a ‘dark vision’ of America under siege from radical Islam, says the New York Times – and that vision is now radically reshaping the policies of the United States. Hence the ‘Muslim travel ban’, as it’s still being called, despite the protestations of the administration that it’s nothing of the sort. Fear of