A unique take on end-of-year carols, Noël! Noël! has plenty for both jaded Christmas concert-goers and lovers of Christmas nostalgia.

The well-loved violist and music teacher has drowned while on a school excursion near Alice Springs. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

John Adams frequently references tradition in his music, using contemporary sonorities and forms to comment on the past. His most recent major orchestral work, Scheherazade.2, is only on the surface a nod to Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic poem, taking a more contemporary approach in telling the famous story. Remarking on the disturbing violence committed against women in stories from The Arabian Nights, Adams was inspired to reinvent the principal tale, imagining a strong and empowered ‘modern’ Scheherazade. The composer gives voice to this powerful retelling in a massive four-movement work that’s part symphony, part concerto, with a dramatic solo violin part embodying the Scheherazade character (another cursory nod to Rimsky-Korsakov’s original). The work receives here its premiere recording with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and David Robertson (also Chief Conductor of the SSO) with the soloist for whom it was written, Leila Josefowicz. Josefowicz’s performance is outstanding, negotiating the virtuosic solo part with passion, assurance and an ironclad tone. She slides, ducks and weaves around an often-aggressive orchestra that’s given an exotic flavour thanks to the addition of a Cimbalom – a Hungarian dulcimer. The St. Louis orchestra’s sound is simply magical and perfectly balanced in this recording under… Continue reading Get…

Stuart Skelton’s Janáček, David Robertson’s Adams and Opera Australia’s King Roger are all in the running for 2017. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Skipworth has won the Orchestral Prize while Dean has taken out the Song Cycle category in the 2016 awards. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Stephen Layton's dramatic conviction makes a powerful testimony of Handel’s musical centrepiece.

Innovative programming and restrained refinement allows ASO to shine.

He’s complex, lengthy and often frustrating. But give Bruckner due attention and he has power to captivate like no one else.

As Donald Francis Tovey writes in his eminently useful Essays in Musical Analysis, Mozart’s three last symphonies, written in 1788 over six weeks, “express the healthiest of reactions on each other” and, being “in Mozart’s ripest style makes the full range of that style appear more vividly than in any other circumstances. Consequently, they make an ideal programme when played in their chronological order.” Thus does one often hear them, as a kind of triptych or three-movement, Major-Minor-Major meta-symphony, both in concert and on record. And thus does one hear them in this instance, recorded live during the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s 2015 Mozart’s Last Symphonies national tour, which commemorated 25 years since the great Frans Brüggen conducted the orchestra in the same programme. It was also Tognetti’s first year as leader. Listening again to Brüggen’s last great pronouncement on these three symphonies (for the Glossa label in 2014), one marvels anew at the way he shapes the Orchestra of the 18th Century’s lithe, colourful responses to Mozart’s almost Shakespearean combination of low comedy and high seriousness. But it is to John Eliot Gardiner’s live 2006 recording of Symphonies Nos 39 and 41 that we must turn to… Continue reading Get…

The Finnish maestro discusses the joys of Sibelius’s symphonies and thoughts on his second cycle. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Jessica Gethin and Andrew Doyle will receive funding to undertake projects overseas. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The classical music recording industry must be in better shape than we think: this is the culmination of Osmo Vänskä’s second Sibelius cycle in little more than a decade. The first with Finland’s Lahti orchestra was widely regarded as “the one to have” but these BIS performances with the Minnesota orchestra (which seems to have at last survived its travails, fortunately) have run that cycle close. This CD lasts 82 minutes – with magnificent sound. As an aside, why, one wonders, can’t more CD’s offer such outstanding value? The Third, Sixth and Seventh are, each, in its own way, emotionally ambiguous and unconventional and occupy their own unique sound world’s, just as do the symphonies of Beethoven and Vaughan Williams. The Third Symphony has always been one of my favourites, despite, or perhaps, because, of being, along with the Sixth, the least performed, but arguably, the most original, even by Sibelius’ standards. The coherent whole transcends the disparateness of the individual movements. I love the Haydnesque bustle of the opening movement and that sudden pause shortly after the start, which seems like a sort of gasp from someone suddenly realising they’re hovering on the edge of… Continue reading Get unlimited…