This month's list of Australia's top 20 classical music albums.

The Russian-born pianist and conductor is the first appointment in the orchestra’s new mentoring programme. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

★★★★☆ Pierre Boulez turned 90 on March 26 this year, and several reissues have already appeared to commemorate the occasion. This set collects together his DG recordings of basic 20th-century repertoire: primarily Bartók, Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, as well as his own music.  Boulez first recorded almost all this music for Sony (CBS) in the 1960s and 70s. In the ‘90s he signed with DG and began again. While his later recordings are polished, better recorded, and extremely well played, I mostly prefer the earlier set. In 1966, when Boulez made his first controversial disc of La Mer, he was still a rebel and regarded Debussy as revolutionary. An edgy, analytical performance resulted, but in this one with the Cleveland Orchestra from 1991 all discoveries have been made. Sony issued a box of their Boulez recordings, reviewed here recently by Philip Clark, where the repertoire is quirkier and more diverse. In the new box, for example, we have no Pelléas et Mélisande or Berg Violin Concerto, no Berio, Elliott Carter, Manuel de Falla, nor Boulez’s orchestral masterwork Rituel. We get Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto but not Pulcinella. The Sony box reproduced the original LP covers, whereas Universal settles for……

These ten trailblazing talents are leading the way for women conductors all over the world.

  This is smashing programming: Beethoven’s last piano concerto and final piano sonata performed by two Decca war horses. Beethoven dedicated the concerto (as well as the Op. 111 Sonata) to Archduke Rudolf; the imperial epithet was coined by his English publisher (not the first or last time a publisher ‘re-interpreted’ a composer’s intentions!). In the context of a work in E Flat, the curious key relationship of the nocturnal second movement in B emphasises the movement’s reflective and subdued character. Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire first performed it in 1957 at the age of 12. Now 70, Freire changes gear effortlessly between rhythmic vitality and deliquescent lyricism in the prolonged opening movement. The Leipzig Gewandhaus occasionally seems more brawny in interpretation of this audacious music than Freire. The Piano Sonata No 32 arrived about ten years after the Emperor Concerto and falls into Beethoven’s late period. Not uniquely it is in two movements: a sonata-allegro followed by a set of variations including the famous proto-boogie-woogie third variation. The rhetorical vigour of the first movement comes off with genius. The herculean second movement is elegant, Freire poetic… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber?…

“Stravinsky belongs to that group of composers whom we admire first and foremost for their intellect…  but it would be a mistake to believe that this intellectual admiration excludes emotion.” So writes pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet in the note to his terrific new recording featuring Stravinsky’s works for piano and orchestra and which appeals to the heart as much as the head. Bavouzet won awards last year for his recording of the Prokofiev Piano Concertos. Here, joined by a very much on-form São Paulo Symphony Orchestra under the suave, alert direction of Yan Pascal Tortelier, he again demonstrates his affinity for genuine orchestral collaboration while submitting to that lapidary yet rhythmically vital realisation of line and texture so important in Stravinsky’s music. The Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments has never sounded more like a multi-coloured riot of tessellation across which drift occasional shadows. The following Capriccio is also pure delight, Bavouzet’s playing shot through with a sparkling lyricism that he even manages to inject into the 12-tone Movements. And if the piano in Pétrouchka is merely a member of the orchestra, Bavouzet nevertheless relishes his role in contributing to one of the tightest yet most theatrically lavish performances of this…

Nigel Westlake ensures the film’s modest aims are not bashed about the head by the music.

World premiere recording Frederick Septimus Kelly’s Elegy anchors this ANZAC project.

An afternoon of sun and romance to chase away the winter blues. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A world premiere bringing wonderful new memories to classic Australian favourites. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

★★★★☆ When you think of a composer doing it tough in Soviet Russia, your mind probably jumps to Shostakovich. Of course, he wasn’t the only one who struggled (and ‘struggled’ is putting it lightly). Mieczysław Weinberg, a Polish Jew, fled the Germans twice, and met further trouble in the Soviet capital when he was arrested on charges of “Jewish bourgeois nationalism”. Despite hardships, Weinberg managed a 50-year career, completing an impressive 22 symphonies as well as numerous concertos and chamber works. The Warsaw Philharmonic under Jacek Kaspszyk has chosen this lesser-known composer for its most recent release, with a performance of Weinberg’s Fourth Symphony and his violin concerto. Violinist Ilya Gringolts is a fantastic force on the disc, delivering an impassioned performance that shows off not only his skill but also his emotional depth. The orchestra is similarly fine, with gutsy playing in the faster movements of both works. In truth, the music pays a huge debt to Shostakovich. Telltale harmonic shifts, stark contrasts in orchestration in the faster movements (particularly wind writing), and a pervading sense of melancholy in the slow movements bear the unmistakeable influence of Weinberg’s friend and contemporary. And as Shostakovich’s music is stained with… Continue…

Pianist, conductor and orchestra are all on top form.