Harry's Place Arts

Friedrich Nietzsche remains a complex and contradictory character. His writings are unquestionably deeply anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian, yet at the same time his penetrating analyses of the nature and origins of morality provide much food for thought, and offer a radical challenge to comfortable and comforting notions that humanistic ideas are somehow inherent or essential to [...]

The North Sea Radio Orchestra at the Roundhouse last year In the past couple of days, I’ve booked tickets for the following: two different shows by the North Sea Radio Orchestra, one supporting the excellent Ted Barnes at the Purcell Room on the 27th SEPTEMBER [EDIT - apologies for putting wrong date previously] (with a [...]

Most CDs sent out to music journalists, I suspect, don’t get listened to.  For me, given that several arrive every day, it can get almost impossible to keep track; I naturally home in on names I recognise, and others fall to the bottom of a “slush pile”.  Commissioning decisions then tend to get made on [...]

Nelson Fraser of The Spectator says opera subsidies are “a middle-class rip off“. Oliver Kamm says they are “a public good” as he makes the “liberal case for subsidies” in The Times. Who is right?