This combination is even more bizarre than when Klemperer and Barenboim teamed up to record the Beethoven Piano Concertos almost 50 years ago. Any initial misgivings back then were quickly dispelled: the cycle was a triumph. Lang Lang, by contrast, provided one of the most scarifying musical experiences of my life at a 2011 recital in Sydney (complete with mewling infant) with his clueless Beethoven and Albéniz so unidiomatic I gazed up at the ceiling and thought of Larrocha and Rubenstein. These CDs are mainly a pleasant surprise. Harnoncourt, whose Mozart I generally revere, (although I was bemused to read one blog that said he seemed “out of his depth here”) also has irritating tics (not to mention his “concepts”) but the collaboration works. I hope it doesn’t sound patronising to say Lang Lang is on his best behaviour and his Mozart sounds endearingly old-fashioned and elegant rather than just careful. There’s not much sturm und drang in the C Minor Concerto and it’s a universe away from what we routinely hear from, say, Brautigam and Levin, but the Vienna Philharmonic’s winds are gorgeous in their exchanges in the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

Grey skies the perfect backdrop for this Venezuelan’s prodigious talents. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Talented 23-year-old French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau’s debut recording follows his signing to Erato last year. That he has chosen to focus on arrangements of some of JS Bach’s best-known works for other solo instruments comes as no surprise. Rondeau is a keen chamber musician and jazz improviser, and one gets the impression he admires Bach’s legendary facility as arranger and extemporiser. There are six works here: the Lute Suite No 3 arranged by Rondeau; the Violin Sonata No 3 arranged by WF Bach; Brahms’ arrangement, for piano left-hand of the D Minor Chaconne; the A Minor Flute Partita arranged by Stéphane Delplace; the Italian Concerto; and the Adagio from the Violin Sonata in C, arranged by WF Bach. JS Bach wrote the lute suites on a harpsichord-like instrument designed to imitate the sound of the lute, so they’re perfectly at home here. Rondeau’s playing is full and spacious in the slower movements, clean and energetic in the faster ones; in both cases there is a judicious application of rubato, detaché, style brisé and other forms of ornamentation. The works for solo violin and solo flute gain more from the harpsichord’s sonority… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month…

By refusing to ally himself to the received wisdom that Bach always sounds best on an ocean-going modern grand piano, John Butt gives us a Well-Tempered Clavier performed on harpsichord and instantly we’re teleported back to an ancient, shady world of tuning that feels as alien to our modern experience as water divining, those harmonic ripples causing the basics of familiar musical gesture to flow in ways which are utterly unexpected, but that also feel instinctively right as Bach swims in appropriate waters again. When performed on the sort of grand piano that does Brahms or Rachmaninov favours, the Well-Tempered Clavier becomes frozen in time, like an adjunct to Classicism or Romanticism, more a hook for our convenience as it turns out because that is the historical prism through which we’re most comfortable hearing anything vaguely ‘Classical’. Bach, though, had precisely nothing to do with that Classical milieu, and Butt, playing on a facsimile of a harpsichord built during the first decade of the 1700s, plugs us back into the archaic world into which this music was actually born. Which is a bracingly radical, forward-thinking stance for a Bach interpreter to take. Even something as glaringly familiar as the Prelude…

Theory versus practice? Sally Whitwell weighs in on what exactly being a composer is all about. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

“Compared to four books of pieces by Couperin and volumes upon volumes by JS Bach and his family, this is indeed a slim output. But what a wealth of genius it reveals. What excitement and wit and drama.” Thus writes Mahan Esfahani of the Baroque opera composer Jean-Philippe Rameau’s complete Pièces de Clavecin, which comprise a mere five suites and two or three stand-alone pieces. “Wealth of genius.” “Excitement and wit and drama.” Surely such phrases could also apply to the 31-year-old Iranian-American harpsichordist’s own output. He’s only made three solo harpsichord recordings so far, the first of which, devoted to CPE Bach’s Württemberg Sonatas (also for Hyperion), created a sensation when it was released in early 2014 and went on to win a slew of awards. But, along with Esfahani’s numerous acclaimed solo recitals and appearances with many of the world’s finest period instrument ensembles, it’s been enough to establish him as, well, somewhat of a genius. Playing a sensitively restored two-manual Ruckers-Hemsch harpsichord in the Music Room at Hatchlands Park in Surrey, Esfahani here takes us on a journey through Rameau’s three collections – the Premier Livre… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

The Iranian-American harpsichordist unravels Rameau (and a good deal more). Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

At the risk of being flippant, male pianists seem to divide into two groups, judging by their album covers – those with fashionable stubble and those with cleanly shaved jowls. Barry Douglas and Jonathan Plowright both fall into the former category, and this might seem an irrelevance were it not for the fact that both are in the middle of their Brahms projects and both have new volumes out now. Both tackle the Sonata No 2 Op. 2 on their latest releases, giving us an opportunity to compare their very different approaches. Plowright’s recording was reviewed last month and I have to say that I prefer his nuanced and “cooler” reading over the Irishman’s more heated interpretation. Douglas, though, does bring a sense of excitement to the Lisztian outer movements. The Chandos team produces a warmer and more immediate sound than the elegant precision of the Swedes at BIS, so that may influence your choice. Douglas knows how to balance a program, placing the sonata last after the delightful 16 Waltzes Op. 39, alongside intermezzos – two from Op. 119, one from Op. 116 – and the solemn and… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

The Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music reveals 2015’s red-hot lineup. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

An unusual but inspired program proves entirely different and unfamiliar. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

CIMF Artistic Director Roland Peelman shares why Einstein is his inspiration.

A chat with the man who held his nerve to see Hobart Baroque rise like a phoenix in Queensland. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in