Endless Pleasure, Endless Love Podcast 1

A monthly podcast celebrating vocal classical music.  This first podcast looks at the music of Jean Phillippe Rameau

Tags: Classical Music, Pocasts

Lost Treasures

Collectors may come to remember 2011 as the year when antiquities went home

Tags: 2011, Art and Culture, Financial Times

It’s not snuff, it’s not snout … it’s Snus

Could this brown, sticky Swedish stuff save smokers from their addiction?

Tags: 2011, Europe, health, The Guardian

Threatened Species on the Menu

Brown bear kebabs, bear meat goulash and bear chops – all these were on the menu at an Italian banquet broken up by police earlier this month…

Tags: 2011, Food, The National, wildlife

Hotel Review: The Grande Bretagne, Athens

It’s at the centre of Athens’ Political life, but this charming update of the grand hotels of old still has resident dogs napping quietly in its porch.

Tags: 2011, BA Highlife, Europe, Travel

Lisztomania: Was Franz Liszt the First Rock Star?

If you thought today’s critics could be vicious, how’s this for a stinking review?

“It is impossible to convey through words an idea of this musical monstrosity. Never have I experienced a more contrived and insolent agglomeration of the most disparate elements, a wilder rage, a bloodier battle against all that is musical. At first I felt bewildered, then shocked, and finally overcome with irresistible hilarity… Here all criticism, all discussion must cease… Who has heard that, and finds it beautiful, is beyond help.”

Tags: 2011, Classical Music, The National

Sign Here, Please – Investing in Autographs

Heath Ledger is up, while Neil Armstrong is sky high.  Tiger Woods is positively booming, but it looks like David Bowie may be going down.  Einstein, meanwhile, is more popular than Princess Diana, JK Rowling is less sought after than Fidel Castro and the Carpenters are sexier than Madonna.

Tags: 2010, Financial Times, Investment

Daniel Barenboim Interview

Life could be so easy for Daniel Barenboim if he just let it. The affable 68-year-old pianist and conductor – playing twice in Abu Dhabi with the Berliner Staatskapelle this week – has over six decades of public acclaim already behind him, so he could hardly be blamed for settling into a quiet late career. But while praise for his work continues to pile up, the Argentine-Israeli’s working life in the 21st century has been anything but placid. Indeed, he seems almost allergic to taking the easy way out.

Tags: 2011, Classical Music, Interviews, The National

Keep Georgia on your Mind

Ignore the preposterous prices antique vintages can reach: when it comes to wine traditional doesn’t always mean best.  If that were true, Bordeaux (which only developed its current wine style in the 18th century) would be a trumped up, shallow little upstart, while the ancient Black Sea state of Georgia, which has produced wine since prehistory, would make the world’s best wine. But it doesn’t, does it?

Tags: 2010, FT Group, Wine

Nuclear-powered Wine

Would you drink a bottle of wine that called itself ‘Sellafield slopes’? Obviously the rain-sodden Cumberland Coast is too chilly for vines (for now at least), but French drinkers have been offered an equally radioactive-sounding label for years.

Tags: 2010, FT Group, Wine