Bach’s brilliance and family history uncovered, plus a glimpse into soprano Anna Netrebko’s latest CD recording and pianist David Helfgott’s enduring popularity. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Theatre turned opera director John Bell on bringing Puccini’s tragic opera to life. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Australian soprano Emma Matthews shares her experiences adjudicating at the prestigious competition for young singers. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Orchestras around the world are increasing their activities in the field of education and community outreach.

More and more young singers are being cast in opera’s biggest roles. But how are their voices coping? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A new adaptation of Philip Glass's opera Akhnaten will diffuse perfume throughout the audience.

Our next stop after Lyon was Polyfollia, a festival of choral music from all across the world held in Normandy. We tackled the challenge of loading 41 choristers, nine adults, and over 50 suitcases onto our TGV to Paris with grande vitesse and sat back to enjoy the French countryside pass us by. On arrival in Paris, we were met by Felicity and Richard, chaperones par excellence who formed a crucial part of the Polyfollia team of volunteers who would look after us so well for the next week. Since 2004, Polyfollia has been welcoming choirs to contribute to a magnificent aural and visual feast in wonderful venues across the north of France. This year’s festival was the third for Artistic Director and Founder of the choir, Lyn Williams, who said she "enjoys Polyfollia more each time [she] comes back". Once we’d settled into our university accommodation, we headed to meet the Estonian TV Girls’ Choir and their conductor, Aarne Saluveer. Over the course of the evening we got to know our fellow singers and conductors by singing for each other and chatting over supper. This sort of choral sharing across international borders is central to Polyfollia’s excellence as a festival,…

From medieval to modern-day: the Mother Land’s secret music evolution uncovered. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Conductor Robert King convicted in 2007 for sexually abusing choir boys will star in royal charity concert. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Australian photographer on shooting undercover at the Paris Opéra and undertaking a Mahler pilgrimage. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

One acerbic US critic dismissed Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony as “a woolly mammoth which emerged after the Stalinist freeze”. Once upon a time I would have said, “I wish I’d thought of that!” Now, I’m not so sure. Yes, it’s still a sacred monster and Gergiev’s reading lasts more than 82 minutes (two and a half minutes longer than his previous effort, which also featured the bizarre combination of both the Rotterdam and Kirov orchestras because, apparently, the composer wanted the work played by two ensembles – a fact new to me). However, I’d forgotten just how much of the score is actually quite dark and brooding. This reading has none of the agonized, self-dramatised protraction of Bernstein’s mid- 1980s version with the Chicago Symphony (his only recorded foray with that orchestral war machine) which clocks in at 85 minutes. In this version with the Mariinsky Orchestra (formerly Kirov) Gergiev demonstrates again what a superb orchestral builder he is. Unlike, say, Petrenko in Liverpool, whose orchestra has long had exposure through a large of body of recordings, the Kirov Orchestra was largely unknown in the West before Gergiev’s emergence as a major podium force. There’s little agit- prop bombast here, and……

  The Venezuelan educator and politician José Antonio Abreu has added another string to his bow, one to sit proudly alongside his Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, firebrand conductor Gustavo Dudamel and a revolutionary approach to music education, El Sistema modern recordings in the catalogue presented in the familiar warm acoustic associated with the Yellow Label. The main reason for my unreserved praise lies with the viscerally exciting take on the criminally neglected Argentinean Alberto Ginastera’s First Quartet from 1948. There have been several recordings (an initiative which now has its first local teacher based in Adelaide). Comprised of four of his orchestra’s string section leaders, he has devised an exciting young ensemble of the highest order. In their debut recording, the Simón Bolívar Quartet presents a wisely chosen program bringing together three seemingly disparate composers in Ginastera, Dvorák and Shostakovich. Dvorák’s popular American quartet was written during the composer’s stay in the States and develops its own specific folk motifs – it’s this ingenious idea that brings together a trio of geographically separated composers on this fine disc. In his Eighth Quartet Shostakovich goes even further, quoting his own earlier Trio Op 67. In itself it’s a lament for the…