Every game among the top seven finishers was halved, despite a regulation in the event forbidding agreed draws

The $350,000 Sinquefield Cup is one of the most iconic annual events in the chess calendar. Part of the Grand Chess Tour and named after the St Louis billionaire Rex Sinquefield, who has been the most generous individual sponsor in all chess history, it will be remembered for Fabiano Caruana’s 7/7 start in 2014 and his record 3098 tournament performance, for Ding Liren’s victory ahead of Magnus Carlsen in 2019, and, most of all, for the controversial 2022 Carlsen-Hans Niemann alleged cheating scandal.

For 2025, the organisers introduced a four-player Tour Final at São Paulo next month, and the jockeying for position for that dominated the action. At the end, Caruana and Wesley So (US) and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu (India) tied with 5.5/9, ahead of Levon Aronian (US) 5, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland) and Sam Sevian (US) 4.5, the world champion Gukesh Dommaraju (India) 4, Alireza Firouzja (France) 3.5, Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) 2.5. The first three plus Vachier-Lagrave got the final qualification spots, but So missed out due to sub-par performances earlier in the Tour, while Gukesh again disappointed.

Every game among the top seven finishers was halved, despite a regulation in the event forbidding agreed draws

The $350,000 Sinquefield Cup is one of the most iconic annual events in the chess calendar. Part of the Grand Chess Tour and named after the St Louis billionaire Rex Sinquefield, who has been the most generous individual sponsor in all chess history, it will be remembered for Fabiano Caruana’s 7/7 start in 2014 and his record 3098 tournament performance, for Ding Liren’s victory ahead of Magnus Carlsen in 2019, and, most of all, for the controversial 2022 Carlsen-Hans Niemann alleged cheating scandal.

For 2025, the organisers introduced a four-player Tour Final at São Paulo next month, and the jockeying for position for that dominated the action. At the end, Caruana and Wesley So (US) and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu (India) tied with 5.5/9, ahead of Levon Aronian (US) 5, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland) and Sam Sevian (US) 4.5, the world champion Gukesh Dommaraju (India) 4, Alireza Firouzja (France) 3.5, Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) 2.5. The first three plus Vachier-Lagrave got the final qualification spots, but So missed out due to sub-par performances earlier in the Tour, while Gukesh again disappointed.

(Signum)
With Taavi Oramo (also a clarinettist) conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony, Bliss is virtuosic in these two technically demanding but approachable concertos

Composed just a few years apart, these impressive Finnish clarinet concertos were inspired by the playing of two of the finest clarinettists of our time, both Nordic. Magnus Lindberg’s concerto was composed in 2002 for his friend Kari Kriikku, while Kalevi Aho’s work was commissioned for the Swedish player Martin Fröst, who gave the first performance in London in 2006.

In some respects, the two pieces are strikingly similar; both are cast in five movements, and both make enormous demands on the soloist, which include multiphonics, passage-work that requires fearsomely accurate articulation, and sustained passages in the highest, most treacherous register of their instruments. Both works are wonderfully approachable, though Aho’s work is the less adventurous, his orchestral writing more motoric, his gestures more rhetorical and fundamentally tonal than Lindberg’s, in which references to earlier clarinet solos, from Debussy to Gershwin, are cunningly secreted.

(Signum)
With Taavi Oramo (also a clarinettist) conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony, Bliss is virtuosic in these two technically demanding but approachable concertos

Composed just a few years apart, these impressive Finnish clarinet concertos were inspired by the playing of two of the finest clarinettists of our time, both Nordic. Magnus Lindberg’s concerto was composed in 2002 for his friend Kari Kriikku, while Kalevi Aho’s work was commissioned for the Swedish player Martin Fröst, who gave the first performance in London in 2006.

In some respects, the two pieces are strikingly similar; both are cast in five movements, and both make enormous demands on the soloist, which include multiphonics, passage-work that requires fearsomely accurate articulation, and sustained passages in the highest, most treacherous register of their instruments. Both works are wonderfully approachable, though Aho’s work is the less adventurous, his orchestral writing more motoric, his gestures more rhetorical and fundamentally tonal than Lindberg’s, in which references to earlier clarinet solos, from Debussy to Gershwin, are cunningly secreted.

Can we experience something bigger than ourselves in the midst of busy, humdrum lives?

Some philosophers find inspiration in mountains, such as Nietzsche, and some in caves, like Plato. Clare Carlisle found hers in a cave halfway up a mountain.

It happened 20 years ago: walking on a Himalayan path, she met a holy man who lived in a cave nearby. Not your stereotypical sadhu, he didn’t have matted hair and wasn’t semi-naked but wore nice trousers and an acrylic pullover. Nor did he have any obvious wisdom to impart; at the last of their three meetings, he and Carlisle mainly got stoned and giggled about the chicken-like patterns on a cushion she had brought him as a gift. Yet, after leaving, she felt a “yearning” for something that they had shared: a sense that there could be a more “noble” way of living, or that we could experience “transcendence”, a higher perspective on life.

From kayaking between icebergs in Iceland to a Pyrenean hideaway, our tipsters know how to get away from it all
• Tell us where to go for late summer sun – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

One of the most magical places I’ve been is Lake Saimaa in eastern Finland – a huge labyrinth of islands and tranquil forests where you don’t come across many people. We rented a lakeside cabin (typically they cost from about €100 a night, sleeping two) and watched the midnight sun shimmer across peaceful waters. Days were spent kayaking between uninhabited islets or hiking pine-scented trails, with only the call of black-throated divers (or loons) for company. We visited the Linnansaari national park on an archipelago in the middle of the vast lake (the largest in Finland and fourth largest freshwater lake in Europe), where encounters with rare Saimaa ringed seals await. It’s nature’s embrace at its purest – remote, quiet and utterly rejuvenating.
Anthony