American bassist Lev Weksler has the internet divided over the authenticity of his performance of this showpiece. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Renowned Australian pianist Kathryn Selby AM announces her 10th-anniversary season of chamber music treasures. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The British classical website’s annual analysis of the musical endeavours of 2015 reflects the Aussie love of opera. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Are we failing music students as a result of poor staffing priorities? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The piece, which has not seen or heard since 1909, was discovered in the music library at the University of Toronto. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

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… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a…

Celebrated Australian conductor Patrick Thomas shares how the original YPA’s launched his 35-year international career. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The indomitable, trailblazing Scottish percussionist is headed to Mona’s Mofo in January. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

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… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

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… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…