In the same month as this disc was recorded Harmonia Mundi were adding the finishing touches to an eagerly awaited complete recording of the Beethoven Piano Trios by Trio Wanderer – a magnificent achievement that went straight to the top of the list of complete sets. Apart from explaining the delay issuing the disc under review, I wonder whether the conflict of repertoire influenced the decision to record in period style with an original fortepiano or if it was a purely artistic decision, either way I’m not sure the choice was 100% right. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not averse to period instrument performance in this repertoire and the players here are three of the finest of their generation. A few years ago Melnikov and Faust recorded a stunning set of Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas on modern instruments, performed with incredible expressive intensity and hyper-alert intelligence, with Melnikov’s transcendental virtuosity allowing him free reign to colour and shape each note. Here his voice is muted by the dynamic restrictions of the fortepiano and one gets a sense that Faust and Queyras are constantly having to pull back to blend. That said, the fortepiano, a restored Alois Graf from 1828,……

Our tertiary education system is in danger of going up in smoke and it will take more than just fiddling to save this musical Rome Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A profile of the star tenor about to make his debut with Opera Australia in August.

Inventive production polishes up a lost 20th century operatic gem.

Ax’s first of three thrills Sydney, combining power and attack with exquisite delicacy and pinpoint articulation. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

How did a Sydney boy end up becoming Master of the Queen’s Music and just how did it all go so horribly wrong? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Fascinating tale of first contact makes for a rich tapestry of Indigenous dance. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Anyone expecting the chromatic, expressionist post-Mahlerian idiom of Zemlinsky’s mature works will be surprised. As Fiona Maddox wrote in The Guardian: “At the stage when these early works were composed, Zemlinsky occupied a crevice between Brahms and Mahler.” He never crossed the musical Rubicon into atonality like Schoenberg (his brother-in-law) or Berg and Webern, but here the “Brahmsian” influence is more apparent than any nod to modernity. Both works were composed in the 1890s but the conservatism of both is in striking contrast to the sheer genius of Mahler’s First Symphony, written years earlier. Both symphonies are essentially genial and life-affirming and seem to lack any sense of struggle between orthodoxy and radicalism, personal or creative. With the First, you’d think you were listening to Max Bruch or Stanford/Parry. The Second is the longer and more ambitious, with a sprawling first movement that, like the scherzo, slightly outstays its welcome. Its coda is reminiscent of middle period Dvorák. The slow movement is charming rather than dramatic and the finale is simply too discursive to have any real effect, with none of the drama of Brahms symphonic finales, especially the awesome passacaglia of the Fourth. These works are not tepid and…

The initial reviews of this final installment in David Zinman’s Mahler cycle with the Tonhalle Orchestra haven’t exactly been effusive, but they are wrong. From that hypnotic opening oboe melody through to the heartbreaking final bars, this is a reading of Mahler’s last-will-and-testament in vocal music whose understatement should never be misinterpreted as lack of engagement. True, it doesn’t have the overt gnashing of teeth and beating of breast that Bernstein brings to it in his Desert Island classic, but it has something almost as good – a stillness and a poise suggestive of a composer on his way to the other side, delaying and delaying the inevitable, almost as if trying to change the subject. And when the big tuttis are required, as they are for the first time in the second song (Der Einsame im Herbst), there’s plenty in reserve, both vocally with Susan Graham whose restraint up to that point is exemplary, and with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra who are surely now approaching the top echelons in European music-making. If there are quibbles to be had, they probably lie in the third song (Von der Jugend) where tenor Christian Elsner interprets the text’s pin-point specific imagery of…

Richard Jones’s much debated production of Strauss’s masterpiece is free to watch online. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Distinguished Spanish maestro loses his battle with cancer at 80. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Rhys Graham’s meaninglessly titled directorial debut is almost pure pastiche.