Pianist Jonathan Wilson tells Limelight what the Award, from the Accompanist’s Guild of South Australia, means for him. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

In an exclusive interview with Limelight, Anna Netrebko speaks about life, art and the things she won't do anymore.

A pupil of Haydn and friend of Beethoven, Reicha was an experimenter and one of classical music's true originals.

S Bach composed his French Suites (or at least the first five) in 1722 for his second wife, Anna Magdalena, who used them for teaching. (They are in her “notebook”). These dance suites, showing all the composer’s contrapuntal skill, are less outgoing than the English Suites and Partitas, suggesting they were designed solely for domestic use and may in fact have been intended for the clavichord. Vladimir Ashkenazy, on this new recording, plays a concert grand. “I use few ornaments and don’t think of the sound of the harpsichord,” he writes. “What I try to do is play on what we have today, and make the combination of voices as clear as possible.” That he does, and produces some warm-toned pianism into the bargain. The Sarabandes, in particular those from Suites Nos 1 and 5, are sensitively caressed; the Gigue from Suite No 3 teeters excitingly on the edge. Ashkenazy turned 80 in July of this year, and has retired from public piano concertising due to arthritis, but this is barely hinted at in these 2016 recordings. The Courante from Suite No 5 would probably have been more fluent earlier in his career, but overall there is… Continue reading Get…

If you’ve ever wondered why you’d never heard of Vaughan Williams’ keyboard music, you might find the answer in these well-performed examples by the excellent British pianist Mark Bebbington. It’s important to hear the full range of any great composer’s music, and Discoveries, recently reviewed in Limelight, brought us some of his unheard orchestral works. It’s wonderful music, hidden away for decades. But that is orchestral music, of which the composer was a master.The piano, being a percussion instrument simply cannot release the Vaughan Williams magic. It works a treat for Beethoven, but is relatively alien to the misty loveliness of Vaughan Williams. Two works for solo piano, A Little Piano Book and Suite of Six Short Pieces, are pleasant, but not much more. Of sterner stuff is the Introduction and Fugue for two pianos, a first recording; at 17 minutes it has some substance. The Lake in the Mountains is claimed to be a masterpiece, and is possibly the best piece on the disc. However, it descends into musical head-banging with a great deal of thumping, not a style I associate with the composer. The arrangements of his more famous pieces, such as the Tallis Fantasia… Continue reading Get…

Schumann’s Humoreske and Davidsbündlertänze are hard nuts to crack. They both reveal Schumann at his most ruminative and discursive. The Humoreske is one of Schumann’s kaleidoscopic “mood” pieces – much more than the salonistic bagatelles of Grieg and Dvořák. Schumann lamented the absence of a French word for whimsy, which is what this piece is about, as much as anything. Buratto plays beautifully but at times a bit anonymously. Compare Horowitz’s recording (made when he was 76) where there’s more animation and imagination. The Davidsbündlertänze (David’s Club Dances) were another celebration of the inspiration of Schumann’s imaginary world and his bi-polar muses and the foundation members and twin pillars of the “club”: Florestan, active, adventurous, heroic, and Eusibius, contemplative and introverted. (David triumphed over the Philistines: i.e. the composer’s conservative critics.)The 18-section work, another love letter to Clara, presents challenges in terms of cohesion. There’s a subtle connective tissue but it would be missed by most listeners. Many of these “dances” are hardly terpsichoral but Buratto has, for the most part, their mutli-faceted measure, from the frenetic bursts of enery to the quintessential Schumann reverie. The centrepiece is the exquisite Blumenstück. Here, Buratto is equally exquisite, though not yet in…

Glass on the piano to the max rather than to the Minimalist.

Umberto Clerici uses Bach's Cello Suites as a kind of platform to explore the experience of a solo cello suite: its pacing, progression of tempi and mood, dance character, and dramatic flow.

A world-class Tristan and a handful of classical music’s biggest beasts are joined by a raft of top soloists and premieres. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Composer-pianist Yitzhak Yedid and actor Mark Leonard Winter are among 10 artists to receive a $160,000 grant. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Pinchgut Opera’s AD has just cut his first solo disc. The in-demand harpsichordist talks about the joys of Handel and musical theatre.

This year’s finalists are bassoonist Matthew Kneale, flautist Tamara Kohler, and pianist Alex Raineri. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in