The second in our series of interviews with the jurors for the Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The two long-term collaborators take us behind the scenes of their new double disc. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Four hours in a theatre is one of our Editor’s not-so-secret pleasures. But is this becoming an impossible ask for many?

We’ve had “the next Callas”, “the next Sutherland”, “the next Wunderlich”, now, we’re hearing 28-year-old Georgian pianist, Khatia Buniatishvili touted as “the next Argerich”. Not on the strength of this CD, featuring works each of which exists in an orchestral guise (and in which I’d much rather hear all of them)! The Guardian critic unleashed as much bile on Buniatishvili’s Wigmore Hall performance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as his feminist colleagues routinely do on signet ring-wearing, old Etonian Tory politicians who ride to hounds. Broadly, I’m forced to agree: the very opening of this recording is promisingly imaginative, with the Promenade played tentatively – as if the viewer is intimidated by art galleries (though The Promenade connective tissue convincingly becomes bolder as the performance progresses). The Old Castle is hypnotically, but interminably slow. This works, but Bydlo, the ox cart, sounds as though it’s lost a wheel. Other movements – like Baba Yaga (the Hut on Fowl’s Legs) – are dispatched in such a helter-skelter way that they become virtually meaningless. What should be a magical transition between Baba Yaga and the gravity and grandeur of The Great Gate of Kiev is completely botched… Continue reading Get unlimited…

I’m not sure Charles-Marie Widor would have liked to be remembered simply as the man whose Toccata provides happy couples with the second most popular wedding recessional in history. But there’s not much danger of that with organists the calibre of UK-born Joseph Nolan (currently Organist and Master of the Choristers at St George’s Cathedral, Perth) keeping the sacred flame burning. Nolan here offers the first fruits of seven nocturnal recording sessions in a row, during which he put down all ten of Widor’s organ symphonies at the console of the superb four-manual, 60-stop, 4426-pipe Cavaillé-Coll organ of La Madeleine, Paris. The first two symphonies of Widor’s Opus 42 are grandly Romantic, five-movement behemoths that balance huge multicoloured edifices of devilish complexity with softer-lit landscapes populated by angelic choirs of varying dimensions. Nolan hovers over all like some musical demiurge, fleet of feet and fingers as he negotiates the massive chords and filigree passagework of faster movements such as the closing Vivace of Symphony No 6; thoughtful and sensitive yet smouldering with creative tension in slower movements such as the multi-faceted Andantino quasi allegretto and mellifluous Fifth Symphony Adagio. And “that” Toccata, with which the Fifth… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Orchestral Editor’s Choice, December 2013 Those of you who still haven’t cottoned onto the idea that Widor wrote a hell of a lot of brilliant organ music, most of it far superior to that Toccata, really need to hear this third volume in UK-born Perth-based organist Joseph Nolan’s recordings of Widor’s ten organ symphonies, part of his traversal of the composer’s complete works for organ. Like the previous two highly acclaimed volumes, this one’s been recorded on the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ of La Madeleine, Paris. Cavaillé-Coll was a friend of Widor’s and the composer’s music is inextricably linked to his instruments, which Widor played throughout his career. The four organ symphonies which comprise Opus 13 were first published in 1872 and later dedicated to Cavaillé-Coll. Taken together, the Symphony No 3 in E Minor and the Symphony No 4 in F Minor form a contrasting diptych, the more overt romanticism of the first contrasting with the neo-Baroque qualities of the second. Both however are equally imbued with delicacy and drama – qualities that are brought to the fore by Nolan with such nuance and insight that you feel you learn more about Widor by listening to these… Continue reading Get…

Zubin Mehta, an outspoken genius among conductors, shares his astonishing life story. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The first in our series of interviews with the jurors for the Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia.

A celebration of listening and a profound meditation upon the power of place.

Perth’s star organist becomes a ‘knight’ in the Order of Arts and Letters. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Generally, when you think of baroque music you think Europe. Handel’s London, perhaps, JS Bach’s Leipzig, or Vivaldi’s Venice. For the composer Domenico Zipoli, his training as a missionary meant that he wound up further afield. Instead of hobnobbing at the courts of Europe, he lived and composed in Argentina at a time when getting to South America meant a difficult and lengthy journey. The music recorded on this disc was published as Sonate d’Intavolatura per Organo e Cimbalo, before Zipoli’s South American adventures began. Though still far from well known, the suites and partitas in the harpsichord half of the set are masterful enough to have impressed fellow composers. Writing centuries later, Vincent d’Indy referred to these works as proving Zipoli “one of the greatest Italian masters in musicality and elegance in composing”, and compared him favourably to Frescobaldi, Pachelbel and Bach. For the most part following the standard baroque dance suite form, Zipoli’s music is brought to life in this recording. Giovanni Nesi’s choice to record these works on the piano serves the music well, bringing a wonderful crispness and clarity to these works. Usually I’d quibble… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

Fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout’s traversal of Mozart’s complete keyboard music is fast becoming one of the most significant recording projects of the 21st century, combining as it does the best contemporary thinking on historical performance practice with an individual and refined musical sensibility. No stranger to Australian audiences, Bezuidenhout is equally at home in an orchestral or solo instrumental context; he is also as much at home with the improvisatory aspects of historical performance as other fortepianists such as Robert Levin and the great Malcolm Bilson. These factors combine to enliven Bezuidenhout’s interpretations in both a colouristic and decorative sense. Even non-specialists will be left utterly convinced of his total fluency in the musical language of the 18th century. And how lovely to open with the deceptively simple C Major Sonata, K545, so familiar to generations of piano students and yet so elegant and ingenious in its writing. Here, Bezuidenhout’s delicate phrasing, subtle balancing of voices and charming embellishments prepare the listener for what is to come, not only in other familiar works such as the piano sonatas K280, K279 and K576, but some preludes, a neo-baroque dance suite, a… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…