Limelight talks to Russell Torrance about this year's strong contenders, Puccini's emotional manipulation, and the passion of the tuba.

Listeners generally preferred new instruments over Stradivaris in the largest ever blind testing experiment.

The French pianist loved the classics before discovering the Stones; 40 years after his first disc he still straddles both worlds.

A lifetime's experience served up in two hours of musical heaven.

The new instrument, valued at $1.4 million, is an Amati and was played by the cellist Amaryllis Fleming.

Ahead of her Australian tour, the Canadian pianist explains why communicating with audiences is vital.

Harpsichord wizard delivers all that is expected, and plenty more.

Works will range from opera, electronics, and immersive live performance, with two thirds of funding going to women composers.

This new 2-disc set brings a selection of Glass’s music for solo piano.

English pianist Jonathan Plowright continues to stake his claim for recording the modern benchmark set of Brahms piano works with this fourth volume in BIS’s superlative series. This despite stiff competition from Irishman Barry Douglas, who has already completed his six-volume set for Chandos and the redoubtable Paul Lewis who coupled the Four Ballades with his recent five-star reading of the First Piano Concerto. The difference in approach between Plowright and Douglas is no better demonstrated than in the third Intermezzo from the Piano Pieces Op. 119. It’s marked grazioso e giocoso and Plowright dispatches it with infectious high spirits in 1’15’’ while Douglas chooses more grace than jocularity with a generous 1’51’’. Plowright bookends this latest programme with the first and second sets of the 30 Paganini Variations. Played straight through they are tedious for listener and performer alike, but Plowright’s solution is a fine one. He plays the other works – the Ballades, Rhapsodies and Piano Pieces Op. 119 – in their original groupings whereas the adventurous Douglas seasons a set of Cappricios with a single Ballade or Intermezzo. So, very different approaches from two very different performers. Ultimately the choice will be yours. If you can… Continue…

Barenboim’s new piano is a concert grand made by the Belgian instrument maker Chris Maene to the pianist’s specifications. It differs from the usual Steinway D in several crucial respects, one being the use of parallel rather than crossover strings. So far this Maene piano is the only one of its kind, and Barenboim has “fallen in love with it”. I hear less tonal homogeneity across the registers, less “blend” as the pianist puts it. The bass produces great warmth, shown off in Liszt’s arrangement of the March from Wagner’s Parsifal. The tone of the upper registers resembles a Classical period fortepiano (“hollow” is too strong a word), which makes it eminently suitable for Scarlatti. I’ve not heard Barenboim in Scarlatti before; he approaches these three sonatas in an unruffled but characterful way. Like the Fazioli piano, which it also resembles in the treble, the Maene seems incapable of producing a smooth, singing legato – rather a drawback in Chopin’s Ballade No 1 and Liszt’s Funérailles – and we are used to more upper-level brightness in Beethoven’s 32 Variations and Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz. The latter is neither diabolic nor exciting, although the tone colours are attractive. Big… Continue reading Get…

Although the man tried to explain why he was practising while driving, the police remained unconvinced.