Conductor berates his concertmaster but Albert Hall's Ring cycle receives rave reviews regardless.

Joyce DiDonato speaks out against homophobic bullying in schools after American teenager commits suicide. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The artform has been much maligned over the years for farfetched stories, but beneath the nonsensical plots lurks buried treasure.

  The son of a music critic, Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy in the mould of Mozart and Mendelssohn. His 43-minute Sinfonietta was written at the age of 15. In its lush orchestration, Romantic melodies and richly chromatic harmonies, it sounds like a tone poem by Richard Strauss. (Both Strauss and Mahler admired the young Erich). Forced to leave Vienna in the early 1930s, Korngold made a fresh start in the USA where he virtually invented the sound of Hollywood films. He was brought over by the Austrian director Max Reinhardt to adapt Mendelssohn’s music for a movie of A Midsummer Night’s Dream possibly on the basis of his earlier score for a theatrical production of Much Ado About Nothing. This is the first recording of the full incidental music. Korngold’s approach to Shakespeare is appropriately characterful, and the power he gets out of his chamber forces is extraordinary. He was truly a master of the orchestra. Storgårds and the Helsinki Philharmonic have given us several first-rate recordings of neglected music – including Korngold’s Symphony – and this disc is similarly successful. I don’t care for the pinched tenor of Mati Turi in Balthazar’s song (Sigh no more,…

  After 45 years of service, performing up to 100 concerts a year and amassing an extensive discography, the senior members of this renowned group have decided to call it a day and retire. While this valedictory release (it was recorded in 2006) seems a predictable choice with two much- loved if well-worn warhorses, it is a warm, hearted farewell that encapsulates all the virtues that have led to the group’s legendary status: unanimity of ensemble and articulation, perfect intonation and a sumptuous tonal blend second to none thanks to their four Stradivarius instruments (“The Paganini Quartet”). To expect great revelations here would be to miss the point; these performances are wise and profound, finding exactly the right tempo for every movement, rubato applied so naturally as to seem inevitable, the phrasing idiomatic and unexaggerated. They achieve that elusive goal of a great performance – the sense that it couldn’t be played any other way. Listen to the first movement of the Dvorák and marvel at the control of sonority and balance as they relax into the second subject, the tonal change registering as a warm glow of autumnal colour, or to the unforced impetus of the finale as the…

In Sydney for three concerts and a recital, we caught up with one smart, literate and very, very musical Beethoven scholar and pedagogue. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

  Following on from Reinventing Guitar Vol 1, Greek classical guitarist Smaro Gregoriandou here combines innovative guitar technology with wide-ranging musicological research and a formidable technique to bring ancient sound worlds alive. For this recording Gregoriandou uses four extraordinary modern instruments: a double-course pedal guitar and a single-stringed pedal guitar with scalloped frets, both in soprano and alto sizes. It might sound gimmicky but the results speak for themselves. Take the five Scarlatti sonatas with which the program begins, all but one played on the double-course instrument. The rich, bright sonority of the harpsichord is evoked rather than made explicit, while the Iberian flavour of the music is underscored by the complex timbre and Gregoriandou’s fluid articulation and ornamentation. Bach’s famous Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV 998 benefits from the crisp, slightly dry sonority of the scalloped frets while in the following Toccata BWV 914 Gregoriandou employs the double-course instrument to great effect; the fugue is especially impressive in clarity and colour. The scalloped-fret guitar works well with the Handel items, The Harmonious Blacksmith and the Chaconne No 2. Gregoriandou’s phrasing and tonal balance is incisive and compelling, the cumulative effects the luminous offspring of the union between intellect and…

  It’s celebrations all round as Riccardo Chailly acknowledges Verdi’s bicentenary and his own 60th birthday with a disc of overtures, preludes and ballet music from some of the composer’s best-loved operas (and more than a few of his rarer specimens). Chailly’s crack band is the Filarmonica della Scala – the opera house with which Verdi himself was most closely associated and where Chailly launched his own career. Add to that the fact that Milan is the city where Verdi died and Chailly was born, and it would seem that all the stars are aligned. The conductor’s genius is to find that special something in the familiar – in this case the preludes from La Traviata and Aida, where he draws such a luminous sound from his string section that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was Wagner. There are some rollicking tub-thumpers too: the prelude to Nabucco and the perky Sinfonia from the seldom-staged Alzira. Drama takes centre stage with the brooding introduction to Gerusalemme (Verdi’s reworking of I Lombardi) and a passionately vibrant Forza del Destino overture. Chailly gauges everything to perfection and his classy orchestra brings out the detail of Verdi’s orchestration. If I found myself wanting…

  “Good God—behold completed this poor little Mass,” wrote Rossini in the preface to his Petite Messe solennelle. “Is it indeed sacred music [la musique sacrée] that I have just written, or merely some damned music [la sacré musique]? You know well, I was born for comic opera.” It’s not hard to spot the traces of greasepaint in this “solemn little mass”, from the tenor’s jaunty “Domine Deus” to those trademark sing-song woodwinds and an interpolated “O salutaris hostia” for soprano, which sounds remarkably like a grand operatic scena. But for all the composer’s attempts at self- deprecation, the Petite Messe solennelle is a work of refinement and serenity, whose theatrical touches, if not always strictly solemn, are essential to its uplifting character. From the opening of the Kyrie, with its finely spun tempi and pellucid choral singing, this new release establishes itself as an arresting account. Pappano conducts with a meticulous hand and a masterful sense of pacing, allowing the Mass’s expansive and contemplative moments ample space to unfold without denying its effusive side and sprightly rhythms. The quartet of soloists is well chosen and balanced. Soprano Marina Rebeka particularly impresses, with incisive tone and firm grasp of the…

The writer-director creates a film that entertains as much as it appalls.

Paul Dyer treats Australians to a tasty dessert courtesy of Stefano Montanari – a violinist as cool as an Italian gelato. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The young musician was in town to headline at August’s Deutsche Grammophon Yellow Lounge in Sydney. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in