The piece, which has not seen or heard since 1909, was discovered in the music library at the University of Toronto.

From coffee machines to Cage, from jaywalking to joyrides, for one maestro, it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad musical world.

Name an instance of unaccompanied violin music not by Bach or Paganini and most of us will struggle. Unless, that is, we have a special affinity with Belgium, in which case, the half-dozen works which Eugène Ysaÿe produced (1923-24) may have come to our attention. While both Franck and Chausson dedicated their best-known violin compositions to Ysaÿe, even violinists themselves rarely show much interest in his original output. A new recording emerges every few years but swiftly fades from view. Each movement of these pieces could appropriately bear Liszt’s title: “studies in transcendental execution.” But Liszt seldom discernibly influences the actual music, and anyone who dreads being subjected to a kind of hour-long Flight of the Bumble-Bee has a congenial surprise in store. Most obvious of the music’s features is its severity, suggesting Busoni above all. The printed score’s pages are black with expression marks and bowing indications as well as notes, but the writing never sounds over-ornate. Rather, it remains profound, however energetic. No real portraiture of the dedicatees, all great violinists themselves, appears to have been intended. The Fourth Sonata, inscribed to Kreisler, sounds scarcely less austere than the First, inscribed to Szigeti, though suggestions of Romanian fire…

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This all-Haydn finale to its 2015 season shows why this group is one of Australia's finest period ensembles.

While the Bachs make a definite argument for musical talent running in families, CPE Bach’s music is very different from that of his father. In contrast to JS’s concentrated style, CPE’s music is full of sudden and unexpected harmonies, rapid shifts of register, and bursts of virtuosity. His writing is similar to that of the Romantics in its bar-by-bar freedom to allow a piece to develop in any direction. While you can theoretically categorise his manner as that of the style galant (essentially tuneful and straightforward), there’s a biting intelligence behind all of his music that’s absolutely irresistible.  CPE Bach’s writings about music also give clues as to how they were performed, suggesting in his Essay on the True Manner of Playing Keyboard Instruments that it is vital that a musician “play with all one’s soul, and not like a well-trained bird”. Clearly having taken note of the composer’s advice, Bruno Procopio performs the six Württemberg Sonatas with verve. There’s a lot to enjoy in this set, with Procopio’s fleet-fingered touch doing much to highlight Bach’s unique compositional style. Particularly enjoyable are the exquisitely phrased slow movements of each piece – listening on headphones is a real treat. The only…

Nicholas Young is a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium and since 2009 has been a Young Steinway Artist. Now based in Salzburg, Capricornia is his first recording on which he performs Roy Agnew, Ferruccio Busoni and Elliott Carter. “The internationalism of all three,” says Young, “particularly appealed to my own colourful identity as an Australian with Chinese ancestry, based in Austria.”  Like Young, Agnew was born in Sydney. His untimely death from septicaemia in 1944 at the age of 53 halted an international career. The two one-movement piano sonatas here are lyrical cascades of colour, firmly modern but still with a toe in the late 19th century. It is to be hoped that Young’s commanding performance will lead to more Agnew in concert programmes. Three works by Busoni anchor us in an earlier era, characterised by a commitment to creating music “that venerated the past but also embraced the language of his day.” The restrained serenity of the Berceuse, is followed by a virtuosic Toccata, followed in turn by Ten Variations on a Prelude of Chopin. Capricornia concludes with a Piano Sonata by Elliott Carter that takes inspiration from Beethoven’s Op. 111. It’s a thoughtful programme, handled with consummate skill, virtuosity…

Following his critically acclaimed Rameau and CPE Bach on Hyperion, Mahan Esfahani steps out in style on DG Archiv with this concept album mixing Baroque with Minimalism. I was a little alarmed at his relentless drive through Scarlatti’s La Folia Variations, but the mania is held in check by rigour and discipline. Gorecki’s Harpsichord Concerto is a strangely disturbing piece with its first movement infuriatingly like a broken-record while the second, a baroque mash-up, evokes Jerry Lee Lewis in a powdered wig. Esfahani is in his element in CPE Bach’s La Folia romp and his double tracked version of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase is a tour de force; stunningly accurate with the harpsichord’s pin-point precision helping to delineate the pattern as it shifts in and out of phase. The programme concludes with a magnificent account of Bach’s BWV1052 Concerto performed with intensity and gravitas, as befits a work of abstract intellect allied to sensuous pleasure. Esfahani’s articulation and subtle timing is a wonder, uncovering details that often fly by in the rush.  Concerto Köln fully supports his aesthetic with austere beauty of tone and focused rhythmic point. Their employment of a lute in the continuo makes especial sense in the…

Antony Gray’s set of the complete piano music of Francis Poulenc is, to paraphrase Orwell, more complete than others. Besides the many pieces written expressly for solo piano it contains Poulenc’s music accompanying the story of Barbar the Elephant (sans narration) and several transcriptions of other works including the Sonata for Two Clarinets, the Sonata for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone, and the ballet Les Animeaux Modèles. The latter was arranged by the composer, so it is more than a mere piano reduction for rehearsal purposes. There is also an arrangement of Mozart’s Musical Joke. Hence, five CDs as opposed to Pascal Rogé’s three. Gray has previously given us welcome surveys of piano music by Eugene Goossens and Malcolm Williamson, but here he enters a highly competitive field. Beginning with the composer himself (who recorded the Mouvements Perpétuels, the Two Novelettes and a selection of Nocturnes and Improvisations in the 1920s and 30s), many extensive selections of Poulenc’s piano music have appeared. Among French pianists are the composer’s friend and duo-piano partner Jacques Février, Gabriel Tacchino, Rogé, and more recently Éric Le Sage. Poulenc’s light touch is compelling; he plays his music as though he were improvising it. English pianist Paul…

Air conditioning and G strings and plane travel! Oh My! Here are the truths all string players will recognise.

The decision to discontinue the prestigious national award was made by the six CEOs of Australia’s major State orchestras.