As a recording artist (primarily for Philips) Ozawa was never extravagantly lauded, but neither was his work as divisive as some.

After 11 hours of secret voting the orchestra have failed to select a new chief to replace Simon Rattle. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Minimalism and complexity rub shoulders in a celebration of contemporary music.

Brönnimann elicits a serene poetry to match Hardenberger’s fluent, fluid lines and leaps. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Guild label’s mission to restore Volkmar Andreae to the “pantheon of 20th century Swiss composers” continues apace with the third release of his orchestral works, with the excellent Bournemouth Symphony conducted by the composer’s grandson Marc Andreae. The Symphony in F was composed when he was just 20 and was his first large-scale orchestral work. Its debt to Brahms is undeniable, but it also shows the Wagnerian influence of Andreae’s teacher Franz Wüllner, who premiered Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. Andreae is best known for his recordings of the Bruckner symphonies and it is obvious from this early work that he has studied the Austrian master’s command of symphonic structure. Andreae was offered to succeed Mahler as conductor of the New York Philharmonic but preferred to stay with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich. However, like Mahler he did compose some settings of poems by Li-Po after Hermann Hesse pointed out the Tang dynasty poet’s works. Li-Tai-Pe, here beautifully sung by English tenor Benjamin Hulett, is the jewel in the crown of this album. The eight songs are worth the purchase price alone. However John Anderson’s performance of the Concertino for Oboe and Orchestra is definitely an added bonus. In all,…

Mahler and Tchaikovsky’s starkly contrasting treatments of childhood, brilliantly conveyed. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Onyx’s first installment from Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires shows how foolish Deutsche Grammophon were to let her go. Pires is unafraid to take risks. Her view of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto not only enters into a pianist-composer dialogue, but also probes our relationship as consumers of this (too) regularly recorded masterwork. With Daniel Harding and the SRSO resonating in empathy, Pires stretches the opening movement to just short of 20 minutes which, although not unprecedented, blows air through the structure, allowing us time to look around, to reacquaint ourselves with what we know from a slightly oblique angle. Some of my reviewer colleagues have suggested that at this tempo Pires and Harding let the momentum droop, but personally I hear liberation within their deliberation. Pires’ analytically detailed playing tunnels deep inside the poetic soul of Beethoven’s score; no glossing over his abrupt changes of mood, the confrontation between soloist and orchestra in the slow movement given Stravinskian objectivity – although you do wish the Finale could have been a little more peppery and genuinely vivace. The Third Concerto is as bold as brass too, the first movement peaking… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

Hush Live in Concert is the 14th in a series of albums released to calm and comfort families facing stressful medical procedures. It’s a compilation of Hush Foundation recordings selected by former ABC Classic FM presenter Emma Ayres. Opening with two of Paul Grabowsky’s Ten Healing Songs, it is apparent that this is anything but the conventionally soothing ‘Debussy for Daydreaming’ or ‘Relaxation Made Easy’ album. Andrea Keller’s A Castle for All is oddly uplifting as it cycles repetitively through the same series of chords. Brass, wind and percussion instruments appear to improvise around Keller’s piano, and while it has plenty of musical tension, the overall feel is not a dark one. Tony Gould’s Gentle Conversations is as it sounds – a smattering of percussion, a gentle pulse, and a layering of instruments simulate just that. Though magnificently played by the Grigoryan brothers, Songs with Strings is perhaps a touch too intense and emotionally confronting for this album. Mark Isaacs’ romantic and visually evocative The Wind in the Willows is more fitting; one can imagine a little bushland animal emerging from the tooting of Geoff Collins’ flute. The childlike journey… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month…

Hoang Pham proves outstanding soloist in Tchaikovsky’s First. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

For Richter’s recomposed Vivaldi, ABO boldly go where no baroque orchestra has gone before. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Con's combined forces meet the challenges of Bernstein's massive work head-on.

Its policy towards female musicians, the behaviour of both administration and players towards Jewish colleagues during the Second World War, its variable performance standards and its exaggerated, hypocritical, archaic formality have all made the Vienna Philharmonic the most enigmatic of great orchestras. The fact that John Culshaw, arguably the greatest recording producer of the 20th century (and genius), who did more than anyone to create the orchestra’s recorded legacy, was expected to regard his invitation to attend a meeting of the Orchestra’s board as a singular honour, says it all. In fact, Culshaw’s contribution to what Germans/Austrians call a festschrift, or series of celebratory articles, contains some of the more honest comments. To paraphrase him, “At its best, it’s sublime; anything less is usually pretty awful.” Mahler, as the Director of the Vienna State (Court) Opera, observed this more than a century ago when he referred to schlamperei masquerading as “tradition” among the State Opera Orchestra, from which all VPO players are drawn. Compared to the Berlin Philharmonic or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, it was less versatile. In… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in