American composer-conductor John Adams leads the SSO in a concert of virtuosity, euphoria and good old fashioned fun. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A torturous text but there’s much to admire in the telling of this torrid tale of the Argentinian underworld. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A tragic tale of family loss in this latest offering from the State Theatre Company of South Australia. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

MSO announces 2014 season, cheaper adult tickets, and a new artistic adventure. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

New study finds our judgement of musical performances relies on our eyes, more than our ears. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

    Former child prodigy Jennifer Pike, who stunned the music world by winning the BBC Musician of the Year competition at the age of 12 performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, has matured into one of the major talents of her generation. At just 23, and after studies at Oxford University, the English virtuoso impresses again with the latest in her growing discography. Accompanied by Scottish pianist Tom Poster, Pike’s 1708 Goffriller instrument sings sweetly on this beautiful and intimate program. From the hauntingly lovely opening bars of the Brahms Sonata the listener knows they are in for special treat. Pike’s phrasing throughout is full and mature – never hurried, never over the top – but with beautiful lines and pitch-perfect intonation. She and Poster enjoy a warm symbiosis which is entirely apt for the works of three composers who were locked together by fate. The interplay between the two in the Allegretto of Robert’s Sonata is a feature. Pike lingers just long enough on the sustained notes that lead into the playful passages. The disc is neatly rounded off by Three Romances by Clara. Much has been made of her abilities as a pianist and teacher – admired by Chopin, Liszt and…

  Yundi (born in 1982), like Lang Lang, is a major musical sensation in China, where he is treated like a rock star by a generation of young devotees. China is a vast and expanding market in this area, as in many others, and if it takes celebrity promotion to get more people to fall in love with classical music, then I’m all for it! My problem concerns the narrowness of the repertoire, implying that a few recognised masterpieces exist and nothing else is worth bothering about. The farthest these young keyboard lions stray from the beaten track (apart from insipid transcriptions of traditional Chinese songs) are Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto (Lang) and Prokofiev’s Second (Yundi). Yundi approaches Beethoven in the same manner as the showmen concert pianists of old. His elongated opening phrases of the Pathétique indicate that these will be Romantic interpretations with no Classical or period flavour. He thunders the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata as if it were Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude. This places him at a considerable stylistic distance from young European pianists who have recorded Beethoven of late, like Ingrid Fliter, Alice Sara Ott or François Frédéric Guy, all of whom display an awareness of…

  Often mistakenly called a folk opera, The Bartered Bride certainly evokes a world of dirndls, wide eyed peasants and hands-on-hips dancing. But don’t be fooled, there is no folk music in this opera, even if it might sound it. In fact a Frankfurt Opera production set in the 1930s with the men in three-piece suits, worked more effectively for me than Opera Australia’s trad production from a few months earlier. Written in 1866, the work was not a success. It took quite some time for it to become the greatly loved opera that it now is. The score abounds in marvellous tunes and infectious ensembles, the composer ensuring a balance between numbers that continually refresh the ear. The infectious rhythm for Kecal’s Act 1 aria, the graceful melody for Marenka and Vašek’s duet, and the merry tunes for the dances and choruses, make for a genial and enjoyable score. Dvorák and others at the time regarded the opera as the seminal work of Czech light opera. Dana Burešová makes a fine, clear voiced Marˇenka but Tomáš Juhás as Jenik is a little too shrill. The buffo comic Kecal, is sung by a superannuated Jozef Benci with far too much…

  Joachim Raff (1822-1882) was a celebrated composer in his time, equally as famous as his older contemporaries Schumann and Liszt (he was the latter’s assistant in Weimar in the 1850s.) Raff wrote prolifically, composing eleven symphonies, yet his work fell out of favour and is rarely played today. This excellent release from Järvi and his Swiss orchestra – appropriately, since Raff’s family was Swiss – gives us a possible clue as to why his popularity did not outlast the century. The Second Symphony surges forward in the manner of Schumann’s Rhenish, especially in Järvi’s vigorous performance. The lusty first movement is built on a fanfare figure, and the work is bracingly orchestrated with clarity and flair. Compared to his peers, however, Raff lacks a distinctive personality; his music is a public utterance, at odds with the Romantic zeitgeist. His harmony is less sophisticated than Schumann’s, and certain themes sound derivative of Mendelssohn, who had been dead 20 years. Raff embraced programmatic music, and this side of the composer can be heard in his four Shakespearean Preludes. They pre-echo the tone poems of Richard Strauss, but again Strauss did it with more imagination and individuality. If you don’t expect more,…

  For many, English song means the late flowering that was Warlock, Gurney, Quilter, Butterworth and Vaughan Williams. But where were they coming from, and were they reacting against a tradition or developing out of one? The latter, I would suggest, if you listen to Parry’s contribution to the genre, and this generous selection of his finest proves as good a place as any to begin. Our guide is the admirable Iain Burnside, an accompanist and programmer on a mission it would seem, and one who has done more for the byways of British song over the last decade than pretty much anyone else. This beautifully programmed recital reveals Parry combining an innately English sensibility with the fastidious craft of the great German lieder composers. Sincerity and proper declamation of text are clearly paramount, and if the melodic invention doesn’t always rise to quite the same level, this is still an enjoyable and important survey. Highlights include better- known numbers like the arch- romantic To Lucasta on Going to the Wars, the winsome Julia (echoes of Gurney or Warlock) and the chipper My Heart is Like a Singing Bird. For genuine depths of inspiration though, turn to the haunting Nightfall in…

Entertaining enough but this well meaning, middle-of-the-road biopic offers little that's new.

With Kaufmann, Sir David McVicar and Kasper Holten, Lyndon Terracini pulls out the big guns for Opera Australia’s 2014 season. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in