Having been placed in the top three of the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Sean Chen’s debut CD comes with certain expectations. Although the works he has chosen for this live performance cover well-trodden ground, his powerful technique and highly musical phrasing ensure that even familiar works such as Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata sound bold and fresh-faced. I was particularly taken with his recording of Brahms’ Variations on an Original Theme. It’s a work I’ve heard several times before, and I have to confess that I’ve never been very taken with it. However, Chen’s performance brings out the lightness that is so often missing – there are some wonderfully delicate moments, and his phrasings are remarkably natural. Although an unusual choice for a concert closer (why venture into the 20th century for only a few minutes after over an hour of lush romantic writing?), Bartók’s Etudes close the CD with a wonderfully acidic bite. Perhaps it’s because this is a live recording, but the more bass-heavy passages in the Beethoven and Brahms become rather smudged at times. If you prefer your Romantic music to be cleanly delineated, this may a concern. That being said, there’s an irresistible sense of thrust and drive in the faster… Continue…

This double CD presents some of Mozart’s best-loved instrumental works but in arrangements that will be unfamiliar to most modern listeners. However, 200 years ago it wasn’t so easy to listen to works in their original incarnations. Thus it is in anonymous 19th- century arrangements for string quintet and sextet that members of the Australia Ensemble (basically the Goldner Quartet with another musician or two) present these works. I must admit to having only heard Grieg’s arrangement of the familiar Sonata facile No 16 for two pianos, in a fine live performance by Argerich and Anderszewski (EMI) and while Julie Adam and Daniel Herscovitch may lack some of their flashy virtuosity, they make a convincing and sympathetic case for this and the other three sonatas presented here. The other works date from much earlier in the 19th century by now unknown composers. In the case of the Sinfonia concertante, the work is scored for much reduced forces – in fact one instrument per part. All of these arrangements were made in order that the works be heard and similarly as string players were more common than virtuosic clarinettists, the much loved Clarinet Quintet took on a new life as a string quintet. So, as……

British violinist Tasmin Little has been playing Vaughan Williams’ evocation of a lark in flight for most of her career – she and Sir Andrew Davis recorded it 20 years ago for Teldec – but this new recording on Chandos is something else altogether. It’s not just that Little’s tone is nigh on ideal, capable of an extraordinary ethereal sweetness, but her sense of phrasing makes the whole work into one long melody, seemingly untroubled by bar lines. Davis and Chandos support this flight with a gorgeous cushion of string sound, surpassing any other audio account that can recall. If that sounds like a rave for a new recording of The Lark, it should, but this disc, named for Vaughan Williams’ hit, is a cunning façade for a recording of one of the finest of British violin concertos – that of E J Moeran. It’s criminal that there are only four other versions of this appealing masterpiece in the catalogue – Sammons and Campoli (both with Boult and both in poor sound), Georgiadis on Lyrita and Lydia Mordkovitch’s fine account with Handley, also on Chandos. Little sweeps all before her with the most sensitive and nuanced account to date. Where she stands out… Continue reading…

What an inspired idea! To capture the Zeitgeist of a troubled decade through the medium of a musical genre: in this case, the violin concerto. Gil Shaham explores violin concertos of the 1930s in Volume 1 of a series which contains works by Barber, Stravinsky, Britten, Berg and Karl Amadeus Hartmann, by far the least known of the group. A confirmed socialist, Hartmann was one of the few genuinely anti-Nazi figures in German music throughout the Third Reich and refused to allow his music to be performed there. I’d always considered what little music I’d heard of Hartmann (1905-1963) very difficult, however, this is a real discovery and Gil Shaham makes his Concerto Funèbre into a highly moving threnody, meditation and evocation of the horrors of war, using sources as disparate as a Hussite (Czech protestant) hymn and a Russian revolutionary song bookending an adagio and a Bartókian scherzo which lashes out in anger. Shaham’s tone and intonation throughout this tour de force are impeccable. Stravinsky and Alban Berg reacted to what they considered the excessive emotions of late Romanticism in contrasting ways: Stravinsky adopted neo-Classicism with baroque forms and his Violin Concerto, with its concision, ironic wit and dancing quality is… Continue…

One part musical, one part romance and one part weepie.

Reminiscent of the 1962 Burt Lancaster drama The Birdman of Alcatraz - though with one major change.

Despite the success of 1970s teleseries Roots, cinema has dragged its heels on serious depictions of the slave era.

Turturro stars stars as a hard-up, middle-aged man persuaded by his former employer to rent out his sexual services.

The concerts that helped win the Battle of Britain are the basis of Patricia Routledge and Piers Lane’s hit show. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

How did one composer document, and survive, the 20th century’s most brutal political experiment? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

What was Elgar doing in a mental institution in the 1880s? Writing polkas and quadrilles, apparently! Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

In an extract from her memoir, the ABC’s Emma Ayres recounts her cycle ride from England to Hong Kong. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in