Catching up with the globetrotting countertenor whose chart topping recordings are going off down under. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Adelaide Guitar Festival Tsar talks about the challenges, reveals his guitar heroes and gives us his top picks. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The ANU School of Music has announced that leading conductor, harpsichordist and fortepianist Dr Erin Helyard is to join the staff as a Lecturer in Music from July 2014.

The secrets of Shostakovich, Elgar’s Asylum music, Dame Kiri’s farewell plus Emma Ayres on a bike… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

If you are not all Wagnered out by the blitzkrieg of bicentennial CDs, DVDs and live performances, you might find room on your shelf for one more addition featuring British baritone James Rutherford. He has already sung Sachs (at Bayreuth no less), the Dutchman, Wolfram, Kurwenal and Wotan in Die Walküre, next up is Amfortas. This album is by way of his portfolio. He is joined here by the excellent Bergen Philharmonic under their American principal conductor Andrew Litton who gives the band a good workout in the Overture to The Flying Dutchman and the Prelude to Act III of Die Meistersinger. Indeed, Litton proves himself to be something of an inspired Wagnerian here, constantly generating electricity. Rutherford has a generous vibrato which hopefully won’t develop into an uncontrolled mannerism, but he is alert to the textual nuances and there is dramatic depth aplenty. He clearly shows in the closing track, Wotan’s Abscheid, that he can handle the heavy-duty roles. Recorded last year at the Grieg Hall,in Bergen, the production quality is outstanding as you would expect from Swedish label BIS. Highlights include a lovely O du mein holder Abendstern and two lashings of Hans Sachs where his attention to text really……

Despite numerous recordings, it’s a rare treat to hear the composer’s original 1724 version of his St John Passion captured on period instruments. Richard Egarr directs some of Britain’s most stylish voices, accompanied by his own virtuosic musicians from the Academy of Ancient Music, on a journey through the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Christ. Egarr approaches the latter of Bach’s two surviving Passions with great intensity, asserting his view of the work at an unforgiving pace. Simultaneous movements of choir and musicians are mechanically concise, with individual entries uniform in expression – a consistent sound that comes across as well planned and not at all impersonal. The tenor James Gilchrist’s Evangelist is a real highlight – his earnest recitatives are sung with a near-feminine gentleness – I indulged in every word with utter delight. Matthew Rose and Ashley Riches give reliable performances as Jesus and Pilate, while Sarah Connolly’s arias are sung with seemingly as little effort as would be required for the spoken word. The program notes boast a “more muscular” version, and with instruments and voices combined it rarely disappoints. The articulation of the biblical text sometimes gets lost in the richness of the choral sound, but it’s…

Mahan Esfahani, the young Iranian-American harpsichordist, is becoming one of the most ardent promoters of the instrument today. After a formation that included studies with Australian harpsichordist, Peter Watchorn, he has been bringing the music to new audiences, including the first ever solo harpsichord recital presented at the BBC Proms in 2011. Esfahani is clearly captivated by these sonatas from one of the Bach clan’s most notable scions. Written just before Carl Philipp Emmanuel turned 30 and published in the year he married his wife, the sonatas are dedicated to one of his former students, the Duke of Württenmberg. They embody the marvellous (and mischievous) nonconformist musical attitudes of the age by juxtaposing seemingly random and unconnected passages as part of a whole. This presents the performer with numerous expressive possibilities as well as considerable interpretative challenges. Using a beautiful instrument (which includes an unusual four-foot “flute” register) based on the work of Michael Mietke (1671-1719), maker of harpsichords to the Berlin court, Esfahani delights in the extraordinary range of colour, texture and mood in these pieces. All is sensitively recorded by Hyperion’s engineers. Whether it is the caprice and operatic mock-seriousness that opens the Sonata in B Minor or the vocally inspired material of the Sonata in A……

We’re only just beginning to hear about them in Australia, but the British Sitkovetsky Piano Trio have been steadily collecting rave reviews in Europe and America, even being compared by one reviewer to “the Beaux Arts in their heyday”. That is not a compliment to be given lightly, but if like me you are unable to hear them on their visit here with Musica Viva, this album gives ample backing to the critic’s claim. The trio – violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and pianist Wu Qian – all met at that great ‘humidicrib’ for British chamber players, the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey. They formed back in 2007 and, despite all being established soloists in their own right, they still manage to get together to exploit some of the richest repertoire in the chamber music canon. For their debut album on BIS they chose two great Bohemian works, Dvořák’s Trio No 3 in F Minor and Smetana’s G Minor work – both of them outpourings of grief – and the melancholic little gem, Josef Suk’s Elegy, much loved by palm court orchestras. Although both major works were composed in tragic circumstances – Dvořák’s when his mother died and Smetana’s after the death of his… Continue…

These are exciting performances of two of Prokofiev’s masterpieces but both leave something to be desired. Matsuev has fingers of steel, and once we get past a strangely uninflected opening statement from the clarinet, the Allegro gets underway with a vengeance. Russian musicians are running this performance, and this is the Russian way of playing Prokofiev: hard and fast. There’s no denying the adrenalin rush but subtlety falls by the wayside. It’s bad luck for Matsuev that a set of the Prokofiev concertos has just appeared from Chandos – Jean-Efflam Bavouzet seeks out the lyrical and capricious in Prokofiev while keeping plenty of strength in reserve. In comparison, Matsuev and Gergiev seem blustery and unpolished. In the wartime Symphony No 5, Gergiev nails certain moments like no one else. The climactic theme of the first movement, punctuated by tam-tam and cymbals, is as visceral as could be. However, this theme is played twice and he rushes through the first statement perfunctorily. The passage is more effective in the hands of Karajan and Levine (to cite two first-rate recordings). The scherzo and finale are briskly delivered but Gergiev meanders through the slow movement until the point where musical tension… Continue reading…

Despite a recent snippy comment in the Spectator, I still find Mark Wigglesworth one of the more interesting conductors on the international circuit and his Shostakovich cycle has been distinguished. This release is a popular combination of Shostakovich’s symphonic Alpha and Omega – his First and Fifteenth symphonies. Both were recorded in 2006 and the First appeared with the Second and Third Symphonies on a single CD. Why it has taken almost a decade for BIS to release the Fifteenth is anyone’s guess. The composer burst on the scene with his First Symphony, written at 18, with staggering assurance. It’s an engaging blend of youthful cheekiness and subversion with darker undercurrents. Wigglesworth and his Dutch orchestra handle the kaleidoscopic orchestration and signature moods – humour, wit, agitated energy – deftly, though tempi are measured. The Fifteenth, composed when Shostakovich was already ill, is one of music’s great enigmas by a composer who raised enigma to an art form. The opening, whose first notes we hear on a glockenspiel, was meant to portray a toyshop. Only Shostakovich could conjure up an atmosphere so sinister conveying innocence. The first climax doesn’t occur until the second movement. Here we are in familiar desperation territory and… Continue…

Australian Ballet's Manon proves there's more than just Wills and Kate for Sydney to look forward to.

Powerful passions run deep in Roland Peelman’s Eastertide offerings.