Put your hands together for the BBC Proms, the grand old classical music party that defines a nation.

Waiting at stage door for a star to appear doesn’t make you a stalker. In fact, that star might actually be hoping to meet you. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Almost 20 years on from the first instalment, Jesse and Celine feel like old friends.

In Alice Coote, Schubert’s great and harrowing work finds yet another distinctive interpreter.

The past week for the Sydney Children’s Choir can only be described as a whirlwind. On Tuesday the choir gave a farewell lunchtime concert at the City Recital Hall providing that all-important confirmation that we were indeed ready to go. As soon as the final round of warm applause had dissipated, we made our way down to the Sydney Opera House where we had the honour of appearing at the memorial concert for Hazel Hawke, singing to no fewer than five Australian prime ministers, all within the hour! After a slight lull in the whirlwind to check that everything was in fact in the suitcase, including our assortment of percussion instruments, the choir arrived at Sydney airport with palpable excitement. The trip afforded opportunities for catching up on the latest films, knotting friendship bracelets, sketching and the composition of the odd symphony. After the torrential rain of Sydney in the recent weeks, the choir was delighted to step off the plane into the Barcelona summer. To stave off the jetlag as much as possible, we headed for the Castel at Montjuic offering panoramic views of the city against the azure backdrop of the Mediterranean. The highlight of the sight-seeing was the world-renowned…

Pietari Inkinen to replace Richard Mills as conductor of The Melbourne Ring Cycle 2013.

Sydney Theatre Company delivers a knockout performance led by stage royalty.

York Bowen (1884-1961) is probably the most important forgotten British composer to be “rediscovered” in recent years. The cause has been taken up by labels like Hyperion, Dutton and Chandos, with outstanding champions in Stephen Hough, Sir Andrew Davis and Lawrence Power. This latest Hyperion exploration of the complete works for violin and piano has fallen to violinist Chloë Hanslip and the current doyen of Bowen pianists, Danny Driver, whose revealing survey of the piano sonatas won plaudits all round in 2010. The major works here are the late Violin Sonata and the Suite for Violin and Piano, but there are a host of smaller occasional works ranging from the substantial Phantasie, a Cobbett commission in 1911, down to tasty soupçons like the Kreisleresque Bolero and the winsome Allegretto. Bowen was a proficient violist as well as a prodigious concert pianist, rendering these works highly “playable”. He was also a master of the dividing line between serious and light, with a gift for a memorable idea that imbues even the slightest work with charm and spirit. Driver and Hanslip turn out to be a match made in heaven and respond to Bowen’s idiom with grace, taste and sensitivity. Recognising that…

There’s something a little creepy about this recording of Vivaldi’s late oboe concertos, not just because they were written as the Inquisition demonised the impoverished Red Priest, but also because an elephant had to die to provide the ivory from which the soloist’s instrument (his ‘Ivory Angel’) was made. Simone Toni and Silete Venti! use a reconstructed version of the 1730 original instrument currently held in a Milanese museum. Rather than a disclaimer that no elephants were harmed in the making of this recording, Toni’s liner notes only mention his own “ineffable sorrow” when the ivory located after an initial search proved unsuitable for his purposes. Five concertos are interspersed with instrumental excerpts from L’Olimpiade and Griselda, forming an intriguing snapshot of an ageing Vivaldi reaching the end of an era where his trademark ebullience seems tinged with something more sinister. Don’t expect The Four Seasons. The overall tone tends toward the lugubrious, the ivory oboe sounding like the soundtrack to a movie set in a haunted house, its eeriness ideally offset by the Baroque chamber organ burbling away in the mad professor’s attic, while the seriousness of musical intent does its best to stay on the right side of…

The current roster of Decca/Deutsche Grammophon glitters with star sopranos, most of them on the lyric side and many with at least some claim to coloratura. Yet Aleksandra Kurzak continues to set herself apart, her formidable technique matched by vocal charisma and a richness of colour more idiomatic form here under conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi, playing with sympathetic panache. Kurzak sings with poise, rounded tone and evocative colours, moving mercurially from the ecstatic assurance of Semiramide’s Bel raggio to Amenaide’s ardent prayer from Tancredi and even a kittenish not always found in a voice of such agility. Her solo recording debut, Gioia!, came as something of a revelation, and while, two years on, she’s no longer such a surprise, this generous collection of Rossini arias is further proof of the Polish soprano’s ability to dazzle and delight. The album focusses mostly on the composer’s serious operas: Semiramide, Guglielmo Tell, Matilde di Shabran and, in a nod to Kurzak’s homeland, Sigismondo, whose title character is a 16th-century Polish king. There’s a smattering of comedy too, though, with arias from Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Il Turco in Italia, the former featuring an avuncular cameo by fellow Pole Artur Rucinski as Figaro…….

The Venezuelan piano virtuoso surprises audiences in the last stop of his Australian tour. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Sydney Opera House cultural spectacular to be a Danish dalliance. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in