Greek guitarist stars in a clutch of her own complex transcriptions of baroque classics. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Bach and Handel on original instruments in a final celebration of the Town Hall series.

Melbourne trio produce a polished pearl of a performance offset by an architectural gem. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

  After just two instalments in his projected seven-opera Mozart cycle, Rolando Villazón has taken a premature diversion a collection of obscure Mozart concert arias that he found in a Munich music shop. As he’s demonstrated already in Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni, Villazón is a persuasive Mozart advocate, but he needs all that skill and enthusiasm to make this grab-bag of juvenilia, rejects and odd-jobs hold together. The opening of the aria Aura che intorno spiri must be one of the greatest opening phrases in all Mozart, but the sublimity is intermittent. Many arias hint at genius and then faff about in a stop-start demonstration of genius almost at work. The most intriguing are Con ossequio, con rispetto and La spoco deluso, where one could speculate that Rossini built his career out of Mozart’s reject bin. The earliest aria, Va, dal furor portata, is gob-smacking when judged by the standards of 9-year-old composers, but compared with the Mozart of 20 years later, it’s scarcely must-have. Just how far Mozart progressed during the intervening period is demonstrated in the only German language inclusion, Musst ich auch durch taussend Drachen, sounding so much more mature and dramatic in intent, and…

    Just as the guitar is accustomed to finding itself “between worlds”, popping up in almost every imaginable genre of music, so too has the mandolin long held a place in the hearts of musicians from folk, popular and classical genres – for the latter, just think of Vivaldi and Beethoven’s wonderful works. But contemporary mandolinists like Chris Thile and present artist Avi Avital are taking things to a whole new level, performing Bach with a facility and sensitivity that would put many violinists to shame. This time round, Israeli-born Avital tackles different folk traditions, albeit from a classical perspective – hence the recording’s title. And while much here will be familiar – Bartók’s Roumanian Folk Dances or Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No 5 – there are also less well-known works such as Sulkhan Tsintsadze’s Miniatures On Georgian Folk Themes. But whether it’s Bloch, Monti, Dvorˇák, Falla or Piazzolla, the performances and arrangements here are so fresh and novel that everything sounds new. Of course it helps that Avital is joined by a formidable line-up of soloists, including harpist Caitlin Finch, accordionist and fellow Bach exponent Richard Galliano and klezmer virtuoso clarinetist Giora Feidman. And that the different instrumental…

Following his homage to the people’s tenor Maria Lanza, it makes sense for Calleja to come up with a recital ranging from Leoncavallo and Tosti to Morricone and Edith Piaf. Although there are songs in no less than six languages, the Maltese tenor is obviously most at home in his mother tongue, Italian. Many critics have commented on the ‘golden-age’ quality of his voice, his ease of production and his wish to remain a man of the people. However for all of the ease and honeyed legato, one often yearns for geater involvement with the text. One also wishes more care had been taken in the choice of repertoire and the lush orchestrations. The sheer beauty of the voice is almost enough to justify Time to Say Goodbye but the rounded Italianate vowels are too much for as simple a tune as You Raise Me Up. Similarly Piaf’s La Vie en Rose remains an odd choice as it is so strongly associated with the feminine (though here his French vowels are far more agreeably idiomatic). Equally odd is the vocal take on the Adagio from Rodrigo’s Concerto De Aranjuez though it’s nice to hear Calleja in Spanish. His German and……

Given the period instruments this may not be the definite recording of Beethoven’s intimate music for cello, but it’s certainly up there with the likes of Fournier and Rostropovich.

This set contains recordings made between 1993 and 1996 and includes most of the major orchestral works by the short-lived late Romantic Max Reger (1873-1916). Missing are the Violin Concerto, the Hiller Variations and the early Sinfonietta. However, two sets of variations on themes by Mozart and Beethoven are included, each closing with a monumental fugue. Reger was renowned as an organist, and his orchestration is conceived in organ terms: sections predominate rather than individual instrumental colours. Segerstam’s disciplined and refined performances, spaciously recorded, emphasise this. The conductor is demonstrably attuned to Reger’s style in two expressionistic works. The first is virtually a single-movement symphony, entitled Symphonic Prologue to a Tragedy (1908); the second, a series of tone-pictures inspired by paintings by Böcklin. With his restless chromatic sequences, Reger sometimes takes so long getting to the point that you wonder if there is any point at all. This certainly applies to the 45-minute Piano Concerto of 1910, which is Brahms on steroids. It demands musicians who revel in larger-than-life romantic gestures. Pianist Love Derwinger understands this, and makes a more convincing case for the work than the emotionally detached Marc-André Hamelin on a recent Hyperion disc. This is good value…

Ray Chen’s rise to fame since winning the Menuhin competition in 2008 has been meteoric and with a musical endorsement from Maxim Vengerov and a sartorial deal with Giorgio Armani, he’s sounding and looking like the full classical celebrity package. This sparkling Mozart collaboration will only enhance the Taiwanese-born, Brisbane-raised violinist’s formidable reputation. In Mozart’s two concertos, he checks-in his fashion-blogs and Italian Vogue clothes-horse poses at the studio door, and delivers everything that one could want, two performances that sing and play and dance with effortless style and real joy. True, everything in the mix is weighted toward the soloist, and the solo wind players of Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra might feel gipped that they sound like they’re playing out-the-corridor-and-down-the-steps, but when Chen simply caresses the openings to those heavenly slow movements, no one’s going to care about the support act. Here’s true star-power – one of those recordings that grips you and makes you happy, even when Chen’s own cadenzas sound more ‘fresh’ than convincing. Eschenbach then turns accompanist in a less ‘present’ recording but equally fine performance of the Violin Sonata in A, K305, a foretaste of what can be expected when Chen tours Australia with Timothy…

Finnish conductor Jorma Panula under fire for sexist remarks regarding female conductors. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Or how online arts reviews have the potential to become the hot new place for musical lonely hearts. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Judith Clingan’s Golden Jubilee celebrated in three day festival at Canberra’s Albert Hall Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in