The composer’s new album with Sydney Chamber Choir spans Arabic poetry and Old Testament verses to contemporary texts. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

MD Daniel Brace explains why St Peter’s Catholic Church, Toorak is paying tribute to the Australian hymn writer and poet. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Can a crack creative team turn Muriel’s Wedding into the great Aussie musical? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Japanese maestro talks about his latest Bach cantatas disc, Limelight's Recording of the Month in October.

Secular Suzuki Technique: More sparkling Bach as Masaaki Suzuki's latest journey approaches its conclusion.

Slava Grigoryan and ABC Music's labels dominate the nominations, while a Kate Miller-Heidke inclusion raises eyebrows.

What happens when one of the oldest European boys’ choirs mixes it with an Aussie choir with a 65,000-year-old culture? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A concert to remember, for all the right reasons, with the young musicians performing above expectations.

Lliane Clarke speaks to the emerging composers featured on Moorambilla Voices’ brand new Christmas album Yindyamarra. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

There’s a good smattering of Weill, but the real finds are poignant political and work songs and a Schoenberg pearl.

Robert Hollingworth has, with customary thought and flair, thrown his little beans (I Fagiolini) into an interesting musical salad to honour Monteverdi’s 450th birthday and his own group’s 30th. His starting point is the only contemporary account of Monteverdi conducting Vespers: a Dutch tourist espied the maestro working away from St Mark’s on June 24, 1620 (the feast of the birth of St John the Baptist). Drawing key elements from Monteverdi’s monumental 1641 collection of liturgical music, Selva Morale e Spirituale (The moral and spiritual wood) Hollingworth fashions a Vespers service for that feast, embellished with vocal and instrumental music of the period. There is much exuberant singing and playing to enjoy in this programme, which eschews the perhaps more famous 1610 collection of Vespers music. (Mind you, 1641 contains the ever-popular Beatus vir with its walking bass.) Hollingworth is happy to give his cornettists, Gawain Glenton and Andrea Inghisciano free rein in the realm of ornamentation. The results are brilliant and impart a splendid sense of occasion. Florid vocal passages are also handled with consummate ease and clarity (Dixit Dominus) while intimate devotional moments, like Donati’s Dulcis amor Iesu! are equally touching. Together with The English Cornett & Sackbut… Continue reading…

South African-born English composer John Joubert turns 90 this year and SOMM Recordings are celebrating. In July, Clive Paget reviewed their recording of the opera Jane Eyre, remarking on Joubert’s stylistic resemblance to Britten. It’s very apparent in this choral music, written between 1952 and 2015. The polytonal harmonies, the word setting, and the choral voicings strongly recall the early Britten of A Boy Was Born and Cantata Academica, although Joubert’s settings are more robust. These traits appear clearly in Three Portraits, a setting of poems by Tudor poet John Skelton. The works are mostly unaccompanied, one exception the charming Autumn Rain (1985). The longest, most interesting work is South of the Line: an anti-war cantata, setting Hardy’s poems about the Boer War. The singers are accompanied by two pianos, percussion and timpani (very Noye’s Fludde), excitingly used. Two movements employ solo vocalists: soprano Chloe Salvidge is impressive in the demanding tessitura of A Wife in London. The Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir used boys in their 2014 Howells recording, but this time the sopranos and altos are female. In fortes (such as Chorus 1 of Incantation, or the Sonnet Op. 123) the women overpower the men, whose… Continue reading Get…