The 27-year-old Chinese piano star talks about her influences, standing in for Argerich and doing her own laundry. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize winning Little Match Girl Passion is Australia bound, but is it opera? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

"Composers Doing Normal Shit" on Tumblr has caused an Internet frenzy, highlighting the normality (and craziness) of musical lives.

Chief Conductor David Robertson will head a seven-city Chinese musical odyssey in June. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Whether this delights or sends you screaming up the wall, there’s no mistaking this film’s uniqueness.

Following up his last collaboration with René Jacobs, a fine Handel recital, Bejun Mehta here presents an intelligent survey of early classical arias. While the great reformer Gluck inevitably opens the programme with the delicious Che purio ciel! from Orfeo ed Euridice, his neglected rival Traetta at last gets his moment in the sun; a scene from his Ifigenia in Tauride in which a slumbering Oreste is tormented by a chorus of Furies is the high point of the recital. Another delight is Se il fulmine sospendi from Gluck’s Ezio and the album fittingly concludes with an aria from that early glimpse of Mozart’s operatic genius Mitridate. Mehta’s voice might not have the beauty of Scholl (in his prime), nor the brilliance of Jaroussky, nor the flash of Hansen but he trumps them in his intensity of dramatic projection, incisive attack and vivid colouring of text. Mention is made in the booklet of the realistic acting innovations of David Garrick as taken up by the castrato Guadagni; the spirit of whom Bejun Mehta seems to be channelling here. Maybe it’s a consequence of the artificiality of the falsetto technique but with so many counter-tenors currently on the scene there is…

John Adams probably wouldn’t like to be hailed the Benjamin Britten of his generation any more than he likes being called a minimalist. But with his 2012 Passion oratorio based on Bach, the American composer follows Britten in proving himself not only as a master orchestrator, but also as composer of the most striking and politically potent vocal music of his time. He also has in common with his British predecessor his gravitation towards earth-shattering historical events with a deeply compassionate response to human tragedies – the September 11 threnody On the Transmigration of Souls and the respectfully handled Israel-Palestine discourse in The Death of Klinghoffer, the latter also based loosely on the Passions of Bach. This two-hour work for large forces, including cimbalom and no fewer than three counter-tenors, features a libretto (drawn from Old and New Testament and poems on faith and liberty) by Peter Sellars, who collaborated with Adams on Nixon in China and staged The Gospel last year – “told not by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, but rather according to the other John and Peter,” quipped the Los Angeles Times critic. (In fact, events are related in a fascinating new light by the mezzo-soprano soloist……

This superb recital could as easily have been entitled “Jakobean” Lute Music, so complete is London-based Swedish lutenist Jakob Lindberg’s mastery of this music. Equally at home in the Spanish, Italian and Germanic lute repertoire – his Weiss is particularly fine – he has for some decades been one of the foremost interpreters of the Elizabethan and Jacobean lute repertoire. Only Paul O’Dette comes close to matching Lindberg’s combination of stylistic flair and technical ability. One need only compare their respective interpretations of the music of Daniel Bacheler: both players capture to perfection the insouciance of the virtuosic sets of variations and the profundity of the slower pavans and preludes. By the time James I became king in 1603 the lute was well established as the courtly instrument par excellence, and composer/performers of quality and imagination were legion. Apart from Bacheler there was Thomas Robinson, Cuthbert Hely, Robert Johnson, Jacques Gaultier, and the great John Dowland. Together with that most prolific of composers, anon, all the above are represented by typical dance movements such as the pavan, galliard, gigue, courante and sarabande, as well as improvisatory preludes and sets of variations on popular tunes. Performing on his restored Sixtus Rawolf…

Purpose-built for late-night listening of the more sophisticated variety.

Earlier in the year the Swedish label BIS released a lovely album of Mozart featuring the talented Russian oboist Alexei Ogrintchouk. Now comes the perfect companion with the latest release from clarinet star Martin Fröst. The disc is timed to coincide with Fröst’s return to this country for a tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. When he came two seasons ago audiences were knocked out by his virtuosity, which includes circular breathing techniques, as well as his remarkable ability to play and dance at the same time. This limpid quality is perfectly illustrated on this album which combines the popular concerto with the Kegelstatt trio for clarinet, viola and piano and the Allegro for clarinet and string quartet. For the concerto Fröst has chosen the version for basset clarinet, an instrument with additional notes in the lower range. Although the work began life as a concerto for basset horn, Mozart transposed it to A for this special instrument. Fröst recorded the concerto in 2010 on a modern basset clarinet. He uses the more familiar ‘B Flat’ instrument for the other pieces on the disc. Playing is superb throughout, both from the soloist, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the chamber musicians…

If there existed a prize for the World-Famous Composer Whom We Falsely Supposed We Knew, Gounod would win it at a canter. Take away Faust, the Funeral March for a Marionette (immortalised by Alfred Hitchcock), the Bach-derived Ave Maria, and how much Gounod have most of us heard? Singularly little. Even his Messe Solennelle and O Divine Redeemer, beloved during the early 20th century, have largely faded from general consciousness. Yet never fear, Hyperion is here, giving us not just utterly obscure Gounod pieces but an utterly obscure instrument: the pedal-piano (usually called pédalier in France and Pedalflügel in Germany), which once inspired enthusiasm in Schumann, Alkan, and Franck. Equipped with an organ-style pedal-board as well as standard piano keys, the pédalier emerged recently on an Olivier Latry disc where the tinny, clattering, bar-room sound largely defeated this reviewer. Hyperion’s pédalier has a much more attractive tone, and incorporates two Steinway grand pianos – the annotations explain the Rube-Goldberg-like procedures involved – to produce handsome results. Compared with a conventional piano, the timbre remains on the dry side. Nevertheless the outcome proves unfailingly musical, which chez Latry it assuredly was not. No-one would credit this repertoire with consistent brow-furrowing profundity,…

A refreshing take to old favourites and impressive weather forecast for the future in conclusion to MCO concert series Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in