Simon Behrman

Yet he remains a deeply problematic artist. For a great many people he and his music have become indelibly associated with anti-Semitism and Nazism. His works remain largely banned in Israel. Almost any documentary about Hitler and Nazi Germany will at some point mention Wagner as a cultural inspiration, and Hitler's devotion to the composer in particular.

During his lifetime he was mainly famous as a conductor. His style was based on the idea that the printed musical score is not a holy text to be obeyed. Instead music is a living art that changes at every performance as every concert hall, every audience, every social context is different. This understanding of how changes in social circumstances affect the listener and performer also explains the changes in the popularity of Mahler's music.

There is a growing body of literature exposing the crimes of Israel and attacking the lies of Zionist historiography. This book provides a different contribution. It is almost entirely based on the testimony of ordinary Palestinians, specifically young people in their teens and early twenties. One obvious reason for this focus is demographic - 60 percent of people in the West Bank are under 20. But also young people tend to be more open and critical about established narratives and the Israeli occupation affects young people in particularly harmful ways.

This December marks what would have been the eightieth birthday of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German pioneer of electronic music who died last year. To celebrate this event the Southbank Centre is hosting a week-long festival of his music.

This book is an attack on Israel's persecution of the Palestinians. It goes further than merely criticising the more extreme aspects of Israel by locating anti-Arab racism at the heart of the Zionist project itself. In addition the writer is a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps who emigrated to Israel after the war. This reissue of a book originally published in 1993 comes with forewords written by no lesser anti-imperialists than Gore Vidal, Edward Said and Ilan Pappé.

This is an important and truly groundbreaking book. It belongs to a line of Israeli anti/post-Zionist scholarship that has emerged over the past 20 years. The Returns of Zionism takes a fresh look at the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and goes much further in destroying the romantic myths of Zionism. The book is also framed around the fact that Zionist texts systematically exclude the indigenous people of Palestine.

The first chapter is by far the best in detailing the full extent of US economic, diplomatic and military aid to Israel. New information is given about the way even what are supposed to be loans end up as aid. Though of course the US government's uncompromising support for Israel is hardly news.

The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela has burst onto the classical music scene over the last couple of years. Formed in 1975 it struggled for most of its existence until the rise of Hugo Chavez's government and the popular movements. It now has permanent public funding which has allowed it to grow and travel the world with its performances.

Made up of young people from the barrios, who are given instruments and tuition for free, it has been credited with giving hundreds of thousands of poor kids a chance to escape poverty, drugs and crime.

The failure of the Russian Revolution of 1917 to live up to the hope it promised was the greatest tragedy of the last century. Its effects were felt not just in the politics and subsequent history of the 20th century but also in the art and culture that surrounded it. Dimitri Shostakovich occupied a central position in these events, and more than any other composer his music explores the hopes and tragedy of this period of history.