Russian pianist and composer of startlingly diverse orchestral works, ballet music and operas

The prolific Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, who has died aged 92, displayed a disconcertingly diverse range of styles, and a political agility useful in sustaining a career in the Soviet Union. He was also one of the earliest Soviet composers of his generation to make a mark in the west.

His First Concerto for Orchestra (1963) was taken up by George Balanchine, which prompted Leonard Bernstein to commission the succinct Second Concerto for Orchestra (The Chimes, 1968) for the New York Philharmonic. The Third Concerto (Old Music for Russian Provincial Circuses, 1988) was written for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lorin Maazel ; the Fourth Concerto (Round Dances, 1989) was premiered by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra; and the Fifth (Four Russian Songs, 1998) was a BBC Proms commission. The last two were first recorded by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Kirill Karabits .

Musician Brian Eno and artist Malak Mattar, key figures in next week’s Together for Palestine concert, explain why artists are putting fears of a backlash aside and uniting in the call for action

A red carpet event, especially one to promote the new Downton Abbey film, is not typically a place for radical political statements. But at the film’s premiere in London earlier this month, that movie’s star, Hugh Bonneville, spoke out about Gaza. “Before I talk about the fluff and loveliness of our wonderful film, what’s about to happen in Gaza City is absolutely indefensible,” he announced to a visibly shocked showbiz reporter. “The international community must do more to bring it to an end.”

Bonneville’s words may have been surprising for some, but they’re actually part of a larger pattern of actors, musicians, artists and cultural figures who feel increasingly moved to speak out. This week hundreds of actors – including Olivia Colman, Aimee Lou Wood and Mark Ruffalo – signed a pledge promising not to work with Israeli film institutions they say are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”. From the Eurovision winner JJ using his victory to criticise Israel to footballer Mohamed Salah lambasting UEFA for announcing the death of Suleiman Obeid, the “Palestinian Pele”, without saying that he was killed in an Israeli attack, there is a sense that if people don’t use their platforms to speak out now, they may bitterly regret it later.

Royal Albert Hall, London
The Austrian legends glided through Mozart and Tchaikovsky but found grand and powerful direction in Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony

Taking the big-shot orchestra slot in the final week of the Proms, the Vienna Philharmonic proved its credentials in two concerts covering the staging posts from classical to modernist. The conductor Franz Welser-Möst barely needed to break a sweat to draw out impeccably polished string sound and top-notch wind and brass solos. No surprises there. But might a few surprises, a few experiments, have made it more memorable?

For all the pleasures of these performances, the cumulative effect was of safety and good taste – words not usually applied to Berg’s Lulu Suite, three movements of which began the first concert. The strings and flute sent their tendrils out tenderly and silkily; the blend when the rest joined in was seamless. The intrusion of low brass near the end of the first movement and a moment of barrel-organ brightness in the second briefly ruffled the surface, but you wouldn’t have guessed the anguish of the Lulu story from this.

From Abba to Supertramp, my taste in music has often inspired a rising sea of scorn. But whatever. I am cool with being uncool

On a first date, relatively recently, I put on one of my favourite albums. It was only later that the woman in question described her distress. It wasn’t terminal, but it wasn’t far off. “I just had to accept that you weren’t the man I thought you were.” Blimey. “I thought you might have bad taste in a heavy metal kind of way, but I wasn’t prepared for this yacht rock.”

This album I’d long loved was, apparently, irredeemably naff. It was Breakfast in America by Supertramp. Earlier this week, when I heard that the band’s co-founder Rick Davies had died , I was sad. Does this make me even naffer? I suspect it does.

From The Simpsons mauling George HW Bush to South Park’s current head-to-head with Trump, animations are no stranger to political battles. But sometimes, things get far, far more brutal

It shouldn’t really be a surprise that South Park has become “the most important TV show of the Trump 2.0 era” . Trey Parker and Matt Stone have spent decades taking any potshot they like at whoever they choose, from Saddam Hussein to Guitar Hero to – thanks to their inexplicable 2001 live-action sitcom That’s My Bush! – other sitting presidents.

But by using every episode in its latest series to focus their fury solely at the current US administration, hitting Trump with a combination of policy rebuttals and dick jokes (and daring him to sue them in the process), this is the strongest sense yet that Parker and Stone are out for nothing less than full regime change.

PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch 2; Bloober Team
An intriguing setup sees an unnamed protagonist time-travel to discover the origins of a devastating outbreak, but a stingy inventory and one-sided battles lead to frustration

Bloober Team, the Polish developer behind 2021’s hugely underrated psycho-thriller The Medium and last year’s excellent Silent Hill 2 remake, clearly understands that there is an established, almost comforting rhythm to survival horror games. It’s baffling, then, to see this latest game excel in so many areas while failing spectacularly on several of the genre’s most basic tenets.

You play an unnamed traveller, the latest of many, sent to gather information about a devastating outbreak that transformed the citizens of a town called New Dawn into the sort of misshapen monsters that have become the staple of sci-fi-adjacent survival horror: contorted of limb, long of fang, and ample of slobber. As you explore the stark, often beautifully devastated aftermath of the outbreak, you search for places where you can travel back through time to when all hell was breaking loose, extracting persons of interest who may shed light on the disaster. A slow-burn story is revealed through the usual assortment of voice notes, missives and grim environmental clues (often, as is de rigueur, daubed in blood on walls).

Sources say decision to collect ‘modern’ art could have two galleries ‘at each others’ throats’ – but others welcome move

A decision to tear up an agreement between the National Gallery and Tate, which stopped the Trafalgar Square institution from collecting works created after 1900, could create “bad blood” and a situation in which the two galleries are “at each other’s throats”, according to senior sources.

The National Gallery announced the shift as part of Project Domani, which involves it receiving £375m of investment for a new wing that will usher in a “ new tomorrow ” at the 200-year-old institution.

In this week’s newsletter: the long-awaited release from the three-person Team Cherry studio has crashed gaming storefronts and put indie developers back in the spotlight

Just one game has been dominating the gaming conversation over the past week: Hollow Knight Silksong, an eerie, atmospheric action game from a small developer in Australia called Team Cherry. It was finally released last Thursday after many years in development, and everybody is loving it. Hollow Knight was so popular that it crashed multiple gaming storefronts . With continual game cancellations, expensive failures and layoffs at bigger studios, this is the kind of indie triumph the industry loves to celebrate at the moment. But Silksong hasn’t come out of nowhere, and its success would not be easily reproducible for any other game, indie or not.

If you’re wondering what this game actually is , then imagine a dark, mostly underground labyrinth of bug nests and abandoned caverns that gradually yields its secrets to a determined player. The art style and sound are minimalist and creepy (though not scary) in a Tim Burton kind of way, the enemy bugs are fierce and hard to defeat, your player character is another bug with a small, sharp needle-like blade. It blends elements of Metroid, Dark Souls and older challenging platform games, and the unique aesthetic and perfect precision of the controls are what make it stand out from a swarm of similar games. I rinsed the first Hollow Knight and I’m captivated by Silksong. I’ve spent 15 hours on it in three days, and it has made my thumbs hurt.

‘There was only room for one band member on each stepping stone. When they saw me standing in the middle of the River Wear, I imagine they just thought, “Here he goes again”’

I joined the Amber Film & Photography Collective in 1983. Amber’s aim was to capture working-class life in north-east England, and over nearly 30 years I amassed a body of work documenting life in the upper Durham Dales – a project I later called People of the Hills. In 1994, I moved with my young family into a derelict plumber’s workshop and yard in Stanhope, Weardale. Living there over the next six years meant I met people in all kinds of circumstances – I got to know and photograph many local owners of smallholdings because my kids befriended theirs at school.

The members of the Stanhope Silver Band, seen in this photograph, were well known in the village. One was a joiner who paid us five quid a month to use our outbuildings as workshop space. I don’t know how many of those in the picture are still in the band – a fair few, I’ll bet.