Daniel Barenboim first recorded the Elgar symphonies back in the 1970s and of course also made ‘the other’ Cello Concerto recording with his wife Jacqueline du Pré. Now he’s returning to them all, the latter with Alisa Weilerstein last year. He’s redoing the symphonies with the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Second this year with the First to follow in 2015. And this Symphony No 2 sounds like urgent business for Barenboim. Forget Sir John Barbirolli weeping in the slow movement, or Sir Adrian Boult with his stiff upper lip and two-metre baton revealing Elgarian profundity. Barenboim’s all bustle-and-busyness at the start, not so much nobilmente as ‘no time to stop, got errands to do’. This is a turbulent Elgar, changing his mind every ten seconds, and with his rhythms and phrases all sounding rather four-square at the outset (and perhaps a little too Elgar-as-Brahms). Then when Elgar says “presto”, Barenboim really puts the foot down, making the third movement a veritable showpiece of technical virtuosity on the orchestra’s part, perhaps at the expense of the unusual but altogether distinctive Elgarian characteristic of nostalgia infusing the quick bits. But eventually it all begins to make sense. He may be an old Elgarian…

Conductor auditions ten top pooches required to bark in rare Leopold Mozart work. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

For some time, enterprising groups have been recording the Sullivan operas which he didn’t write with Gilbert, a welcome development, especially when as well performed and recorded as is this splendid offering from Wales. Most contain a good measure of attractive music and are important additions to the catalogue. The Beauty Stone arrived at the Savoy in 1898, two years after the last G&S opera, The Grand Duke and ran for a mere 50 performances. The Savoy audience had tired of the genre and were being entertained by hits such as Floradora and The Geisha. On top of that, the librettist, Comyns Carr and the brilliant playwright Arthur Wing Pinero, overwrote the piece into the ground. Unlike Sullivan, who knew a thing or two about these things, they thought it was play with music, and it ran four hours at its premiere. Now, with a good recording and first-rate cast we can largely ignore the clumsier aspects of the drama and content ourselves with Sullivan’s fine score, and it is excellent. With his grand opera, Ivanhoe in 1891 Sullivan was endeavouring to find a way from Wagner to a newer romantic English school with strong medieval elements. He continued this…

I’ve long admired and respected the work of Neil McEwan and his accomplished choir at Christ Church St Laurence in Sydney. This disc is a fine celebration of McEwan’s scholarly expertise in the area of Gregorian chant with his dedicated ‘chant schola’. What makes this disc particularly interesting is the premiere recording of eight items from the Rimini Antiphonal, a 14th-century chant book housed in the State Library of New South Wales. McEwan transcribed these chants and prepared them for performance. Other chants from the regular plainsong repertory as well as three polyphonic motets and two chants by Hildegard of Bingen make for a pleasantly varied program. Performances are enhanced by the atmospheric but not overwhelmingly reverberant acoustic of the chapel at St Scholastica’s Convent, Glebe. McEwan elicits the necessary flexibility from his male singers in the chant. Their occasional bursts of vocal fervour are understandable. Robert White’s Christe qui lux es et dies, Taverner’s Dum transisset Sabbatum and Byrd’s Laetentur caeli provide an appropriate change of texture along the way. These motets are sung with clarity and precision. Hildegard’s chants, O tu suavissima virga and O eterne Deus add yet another dimension to the program. The addition of a…

Jean-Rudolf Kars’ parents were Viennese Jews but he grew up in France, part of the same generation as Jean-Philippe Collard and Pascal Rogé. He converted to Catholicism in 1976 (three years after touring Australia for the ABC) and became a priest in 1983. On the strength of these discs, the priesthood’s gain was music’s loss. One CD contains Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and also the D.946 Klavierstücke. This is Schubert at his most profound, simultaneously radiating Biedermeier exquisiteness, under the shadow of imminent death. Kars’ readings are searching, charming and poignant. His second CD contains both books of Debussy’s Préludes, beautifully played, if a little slower than we’re accustomed to today (The Submerged Cathedral must be somewhere in the Mariana Trench). His Messiaen excerpts from Twenty Contemplations of the Christ Child and the Catalogue of Birds underscore the extent to which Messiaen was Debussy’s spiritual successor. Kars’ renditions are wonderfully extrovert and joyful, emphasising the ecstatic side of Messiaen. Dame Gillian Weir, perhaps the most ardent champion of Messiaen’s organ output, performs previously unissued works including the epic Les Corps glorieux – Sept Visions brèves de la Vie des Ressuccités “The Bodies in Glory – Seven Brief Visions of the life…

In the first volume we heard Wilhelm Stenhammar pay tribute to Beethoven, and creating in the fourth what some consider to be the finest Scandinavian string quartet. Now the excellent Stenhammar Quartet are back with volume two in which the listener discovers how the composer has progressed after some self-imposed rigorous counterpoint study, and gets to hear the premiere recording of the unnumbered F Minor Quartet composed in 1897. Stenhammar was pleased with the middle movements but worried about the finale and in the end abandoned it. Was he justified? You decide. After the fourth quartet the self-critical Stenhammar felt he needed further refinement, especially in counterpoint, and he spent nine years studying. The results can be heard in the fifth and sixth quartets. The melody and invention are as rich as before but there is a greater homogeneity in the part writing. Gone too are the tributes to Beethoven and Haydn and the flirtation with atonality – this is late Romantic music with strong folk influences and a light infusion of the ‘impressionism’ of Debussy or even Delius and the influence of his great friend Jean Sibelius. Although a celebrated pianist, Stenhammar worked closely with the Aulin Quartet and…

There’s something so inviting about this second installment in Leif Ove Andsnes’ Beethoven Piano Concertos cycle, as if the pianist/director and ever-so-sympatico Mahler Chamber Orchestra are offering a sparklingly restored heritage hotel, blazing fireplace and all, to the cold and weary musical traveller. The engaging moods of Beethoven’s Concertos can claim some credit in themselves, but just as in the critically acclaimed previous recording of One and Three by the same players, it’s the lack of hang-ups and a maximum of good-vibes that makes you want to be best friends with these performances, right from the opening ritornello of No. Two that takes off with a smile on its face. Andsnes himself then brings all the enthusiasm and attention to detail of the perfect dinner-host. And it’s a well-balanced meal being served up, always lyrical, with the slow movements in particular achieving an extraordinary balance between lightness of touch, profundity of meaning, depth of emotion and sheer take-your-breath-away beauty. In the outer movements, the melodies extend the view toward the musical horizons, and yet every moment in its own right seems so filled with musical detail, the diversity of instrumental colours and the shifting points of focus constantly prompting the…

Starring 30 hot young classical properties, ‘Our man in the Palace’, a great ballet and Australia’s musical philanthropists.

Ge Gan-Ru (b.1954) has been described by as China’s finest avant-garde composer. Like the young Takemitsu, he had to study Western classical music in secret but when the Shanghai conservatory was reopened in 1974, he found an affinity for the likes of Stockhausen, Ligeti and Debussy. These became influences in Ge Gan-Ru’s own compositions and merged successfully with traditional Chinese music in a way where the styles were truly synthesised into an individual and exciting compositional voice. This new BIS disc is a marvel where orchestral colours and big Messiaenic blocks of sound brilliantly coalesce to form a highly individual sound world where seemingly disparate musical styles seamlessly knit with the 2,000 year old Qin tales that provide the inspiration (the suite Lovers Besieged is based on the famous Farewell, My Concubine). Fairy Lady Meng Jiang was composed for the Israeli flute virtuoso Sharon Bezaly who has no problems whatsoever with the unfamiliar Asian influences within this highly impressive work. Both works find their inspiration in difficult periods of Chinese history but never do the Western and Chinese elements oppose or work against each other. For here is truly international music – a Chinese-American composer, an Israeli soloist and Spanish…

The top pianist tells us why youth orchestras are so special – and not just for the viola jokes. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Australian arts sector will face cuts of more than $100 million across the board. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

With just eight days left of their crowdfunding campaign, Ironwood calls upon audiences to reach $22,000 target. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in