The Adelaide Festival’s new music micro-festival looks set to break a few more moulds than usual. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Australia’s international star composer discusses music, his relationship with the past, and his plans for the future. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Australia’s top coloratura sings Mozart and talks training, top notes, bel canto, bosoms and Bonynge. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Sitkovetsky trio prove three will be company when it comes to Carl Vine’s 60th birthday gift to Musica Viva. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Sydney Dance Co’s AD used to chose Madonna over flamenco, but nowadays it’s classical that sets his toes tapping. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

We often think that all the magic in a performance happens on the stage, but I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that the excitability of the audience is as much to do with a successful concert as the performers themselves.  Recently we had two packed houses at the Sydney Opera House for the Australian version of the Last Night of the Proms. In our Australian way, we have none of the other concerts of that great London festival, so our first night is also our Last Night. On a Friday in Sydney, I walked out as conductor and already you could tell that the audience was ready to combust. It was like dense bushland with tinder dry leaves and dead wood littered everywhere, waiting for a match in order to burst into life. You can tell from the way you enter. If the applause is warm with a few whoops and you have to wait for them to calm down before you start, you know you are on to a winner. If on the other hand the audience barely claps long enough to get you to the podium, and you turn around in silence to acknowledge the applause after it…

As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel room in Gladstone in Queensland, looking out on the astonishing heavy-machinery activity of a waterfront dominated by LNG terminals and power station smokestacks. I’m on tour with the Queensland Symphony and we have an education concert and then a big free outdoor event this evening at the Marina Stage. We’ve already been in Rockhampton and the concerts there were almost full at the Pilbeam Theatre by the pretty Fitzroy River. The reason they were full is that they were free. Over the last years the paying audiences on the orchestra’s yearly northern tour have started to contract, but this new free model means audiences have returned like water to Lake Eyre, all due to some passionate corporate sponsorship. ERM Power does wonderful things for the QSO. Instead of a sponsorship being an amount of money, the company buys tickets and gives them to schools and people who maybe wouldn’t think of going to a concert, or wouldn’t have the resources to go. Sometimes, like Australia Pacific LNG in Gladstone, it underwrites the entire concert which means that it becomes a free event. A free ticket is a lovely thing – it…

For reasons best known to themselves (perhaps to capitalise on an A-list cast) the Mariinsky launched its series of live Ring Cycle recordings with the second opera of the tetralogy, an acclaimed Die Walküre. Now they’ve backtracked to Das Rheingold, Wagner’s “Vorabend” (“preliminary evening) and if the names in the frame aren’t all as familiar as Walküre’s, fear not: this is a top shelf cast in a musically and dramatically involving performance. René Pape brings serious star wattage as Wotan, of course, and he’s a majestic but lyrical god, singing with meltingly beautiful timbre and a Lieder-like intensity whose relative lack of thunder only heightens our nervous anticipation of the storms ahead. A supersized, sonorous wife would be at odds with his suave Wotan, so Ekaterina Gubanova is a well-chosen Fricka, singing on a similarly elegant scale and with a beguiling hint of soprano-ish silver. Of their offspring, it’s Alexey Markov whose clarion Donner makes the most vivid impression, though there’s little to fault in either Viktoria Yastrebova’s Freia or Sergei Semishkur’s Froh. Stephan Rügamer’s slender, high-lying tenor (the kind one half expects to break into Britten at any moment) brings unctuous relish and pointed detail to Loge, while Andrei Popov’s Mime takes…

Clearing the paper plates of soggy pasta and strudel from the 2013 Verdi and Wagner bicentenary offerings, we come across this fine bottle of French sacrificial wine, uncorked to mark 50 years since the death of Francis Poulenc. The oft-quoted description of the composer as “half monk, half rascal” goes some way to describe the dichotomy of his sacred music, as well as his character in general. All three works feature austere counterpoint grounded in medieval chant yet enveloped in lush orchestral sound with pungent, playful details – the precise dissonances of the Stabat Mater Vidit suum, for instance; the joie de vivre of the Gloria’s Laudamus Te; the Provençal country sir of the Domine Fili. Ever-eccentric French soprano Patricia Petibon proves a sensitive soloist to match Poulenc’s every mood. Her light voice is mysterious on the swooping, ethereal Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, pure-toned but never lacking in warmth; almost too sensual to be sacred. The most austere work is the earliest, the Litanies à la Vierge Noire, dating from 1936 with the openly gay Poulenc’s profound return to Catholicism after the traumatic death of a friend in a car accident. Seeking solace in the sanctuary of Rocamadour with it’s…

Unlike some of today’s prodigies, Rusian pianist Daniil Trifonov (b. 1992) shows every sign of artistic maturity in this live recital, given at New York’s Carnegie Hall in February 2013, where he made his American debut in 2009, aged 18. Two years ago he recorded a Chopin disc for Decca, but this live recital truly puts him on the world stage and signifies a distinguished career ahead. Trifonov’s program comprises the Liszt B Minor Sonata, Scriabin’s Second Piano Sonata, Chopin’s 24 Preludes Op 28 and a short piece by Medtner. The contents of that program suggest his great Soviet predecessor, Sviatoslav Richter. Trifonov does not approach Richter in sheer power and concentration – who ever could? – yet he has more to offer than merely spectacular technique. Subtle and affecting at the soft end of the dynamic spectrum, Trifonov also understands “the demonic element” (as his champion Martha Argerich put it). His Liszt Sonata is truly grounded. Last year I was impressed by Khatia Buniatshvili’s recording, which fizzed with edgy energy, but Trifonov’s less volatile but no less expressive approach properly anchors the work. His lyrical gift is evident in the way he coaxes the chorale theme out of the depths…

This is the sort of ‘spicy’ that doesn’t interfere with polite dinner conversation. Les Passions de l’Âme, the Swiss early music group comprising members of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and other illustrious ensembles, have put together a charming program of 17th-century Austrian music that was, thematically at least, a little out of the ordinary during its time. The three composers use the violin to tell stories about life and nature, while exploring its mimetic and technical capabilities. Biber’s Sonata Representativa is the best known here; Meret Lüthi’s sweet-toned solo imitates a clucking hen and a yowling cat with double stopping, tuning and pitch effects. Biber himself was a virtuoso violinist and one really feels the brilliant sense of play and curiosity (which, in this case, didn’t seem to kill the cat). The violin transforms into a sword for Schmelzer’s balletto Die Fechtschule or The Fencing School, in which stately dance forms are given zest as the agile solo part weaves, lunges and attacks. Composers cross swords in Schmelzer’s Battle Against the Turks, based on one of Biber’s Mystery Sonatas. It’s the most ‘exotic’ moment on the album: irresistible tambourine and darabuka percussion (especially in the syncopated Posta turcica), oriental scales…

I found this CD puzzling, but a friend described it as a “marquee” issue – a showcase for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and director, Richard Tognetti. The main courses are the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and the first movement of Brahms’ First Symphony. The rest of the program is a Bach violin concerto and two other short excerpts. I’m at a loss to understand why anyone would want to hear just the first movement of the Beethoven or the Brahms. Surely it would have made more sense to issue a double CD featuring both in their entirety. Tognetti’s way with the concerto is admirable. Without sounding rushed, he keeps it moving while retaining the monumental grandeur. His is an unfailingly sweet-toned reading with plenty of animation. The Brahms is similarly flowing, eschewing the granitic approach of Klemperer and Furtwängler. I recently saw Tognetti’s Brahms Fourth. His conducting gestures were infrequent, but the results were stunning: the ACO’s ensemble was tight and the heft of just 48 players was amazing. This is not quite as impressive but I’d still like to hear the entire performance as the textures are admirably lucid with just the right quotient of bounce or schwung…