Our finest musicians from the University of Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music are in Italy for the first European Chamber Music Summer School.  They are staging daily concerts in Verona, Mantova and Venice at prestigious venues like The Bibiena Theatre, Palazzo Te and La Pieta.  Our students report from Italy. 2014 European Chamber Music School participants As I sit on the balcony watching a thunderstorm engulf the city, I am compelled to reflect on the beginning of what will prove to be a wonderful Italian experience. Back in March we auditioned for the inaugural Estivo chamber music festival. Myself, along with over forty other students were lucky enough to be selected. I was selected to perform pieces from the art song repertoire, by composers such as Tosti, Liszt and Massenet, as well as in a vocal quartet performing Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes. After much preparation and many rehearsals, July 5th was upon us and we were due to fly to Verona. After a long flight (who knew Australia was so far away!) and bus from Milan, we arrived in Verona on a beautiful summer day. As one must do when arriving in Italy, we went looking for the nearest pizzeria, to get our fill…

Casper David Friedrich’s painting The Wanderer Above The Sea Of Mist has been trotted out for countless album covers, but for Austrian baritone Florian Boesch’s latest collaboration with Roger Vignoles it couldn’t be more appropriate. From the English pianist’s gloomy opening chords we almost feel the fog that enshrouds the mountains and valleys surveyed by the figure on his lonely crag. Boesch’s gentle, expressive baritone paints in the hopeless despair of a man who wanders “silent and joyless, and my sighs forever ask: Where?” That’s the Wanderer of D489, but this collection of 19 songs is not all Weltschmerz, although Boesch does resignation very well with his lovely sotto voce. In Aus Heliopolis II we hear a more assertive narrator and Auf der Bruck has singer and piano cantering along. Schubert is a competitive market at the moment. So why buy this one? Well, Boesch is a compelling singer. He already has Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin under his belt with accompanist Malcolm Martineau (who has recorded the same repertoire with Bryn Terfel), but he and pianist Vignoles have a great chemistry. This complements their previous outing of songs by the lesser-known Carl Loewe. Boesch’s lines are poetic and beautifully…

Bach’s Goldberg Variations has become a piece of cultural capital, used as a prop for intellectual pretensions, and with so many recordings available I must admit to a grumpy scowl as I loaded this disc into my player. Here we go again, another pianist thinks the world needs to hear his thoughts on this venerable masterpiece, this had better be good. Press play and the Aria is elegant and straightforward, Var I is crisp and playful – good so far. As the disc went on a smile spread from ear to ear – this is rather special, you know. Denk’s limpid tone and judicious pedalling maintains clarity while his architectural grasp integrates each variation into a grand plan while characterising each with a specific mood and attitude. He sees patterns where others merely see notes. Voices move forward and back by way of subtle lighting effects rather than glaring follow-spots; the descending chromatic bass at the beginning of Var XXI is tinted with a darker baritonal colour on the repeat – classy! The fughetta of Var X is stern but not hectoring; indeed Denk never makes an ugly sound and doesn’t peck. There are sensual delights such as his gleaming touch…

The third volume of Paul and Huw Watkins’ survey of British cello music turns to sonatas written after 1945 by Edmund Rubbra, Alan Rawsthorne, and EJ Moeran. All three are works that haven’t entered mainstream repertoire, but this CD makes a compelling argument that they should. Rubbra’s Sonata in G Minor shows his preoccupation with counterpoint and the music of the 16th century, even extending to authoring a short but fascinating book entitled Counterpoint – A Survey (now, disappointingly, out of print). Cello and piano work together in a way that’s reminiscent of the Renaissance masters of polyphony, but with a piquant 20th-century touch. By contrast, Rawsthorne’s work is highly chromatic and passionate, with moments of crystalline delicacy as well as shattering power. Similarly, Moeran’s Sonata is a stirring piece, sounding at times like a more chromatically dense Brahms. There are hints at his interest in folk music, particularly in the dark and roiling first movement. All three works are finely played and recorded but I have reservations about programming. Rawsthorne and Moeran back-to-back results in a solid 35 minutes of similar weight; both Rubbra and Moeran wrote short works that could have been added to cleanse the palate. A…

Maurizio Pollini’s two previous recordings of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto, both conducted by Abbado, are the stuff of legend – the 1995 live recording in particular often being regarded as simply the greatest ever made of this strangely-structured but ultimately deeply revealing insight into the composer’s complex psychology. So why record it yet again? Well, because Pollini’s towering musical genius (and yes, that description is offered by way of sober assessment) just grows and grows with time. Indeed, nearly 20 years is too long to wait for this, his latest State-of-the-Musical-Union address on what makes this four-movement work in B Flat such a compelling experience, even when it doesn’t quite have the bravura or colour-and-movement of its D Minor predecessor. And again, Pollini, now in his 70s, delivers with everything we’ve come to expect from him – the poetry most of all, especially as the piano enters after the famous cello melody at the start of the slow movement. Then there’s the humanity of it – you can tell just from the sound that there is a great, compassionate spirit animating it. And of course, for all the magnificence of Pollini’s playing, it still sounds simply like a direct line…

I’ve always thought Khachaturian’s ballet music superior to his concertos. Even James Ehnes’ customary fusion of virtuosity and insight cannot convince me otherwise. Despite the contribution David Oistrakh made to its composition, if I had to sum up the Violin Concerto in one word, I’m afraid it would be “racketty”. Even the “exotic” arabesques, which must have seemed original in the 1930s were much better when used by composers like Dmitri Tiomkin and Miklós Rózsa in 1950s “sword and sandal” epics. Ehnes ennobles virtually every piece of music he performs but I think his prodigious talent is wasted on this work. The rest of the disc contains string quartets performed by Ehnes’ eponymous quartet, a curious juxtaposition because, while the Khachaturian has never really entered the “canon” of great violin concertos, it certainly does have audience appeal. Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet is his only work in this genre to have gained permanent status in the repertoire, but it’s still a hard nut to crack for the uninitiated listener. It’s a work of emotional extremes, although the very opening is played here with a warmth I’ve never heard before. The second movement is demented (even by Shostakovich’s standards) but these wonderful……

David Robertson’s interpretation of Stravinsky's ballet is a fine one in conception if compromised in execution.

Canadian baritone Gerald Finley teams up with one of today’s finest accompanists.

Tiberghien captures the quicksilver transience of Szymanowski.

Cementing his place as one of the most exciting violinists of his day, Laurent Korcia has delved into the tradition of the great virtuosi for his latest release. The 50-year-old Frenchman takes on Paganini, Kreisler and Ysäye and he comes out well ahead of rivals on points. The opener is Fritz Kreisler’s transcription of the first movement of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No 1. Even the excellent Chamber Orchestra of Paris can’t disguise the weaknesses in Kreisler’s orchestration which descends into schmaltziness and shows little evidence of his studies with Bruckner. The violin part, however, is pure Paganini and gives Korcia no difficulties. He is in similar sparkling form with Eugene Ysäye’s gemlike variations on the famous 24th Caprice accompanied by Haruko Ueda on piano. There’s more Kreisler – his transcription of Albéniz’s Malaguena, La Gitana and the impressionistic Petite Valse for Solo Piano, featuring Ueda again – before Paganini’s own variations on Di Tanti Palpiti from Rossini’s Tancredi brings this charming disc to a stirring close. Articulation, intonation and bowing are faultless; pyrotechnics handled with aplomb and taste – he knows better than to be flashy and vulgar. His ‘Zahn’ Stradivarius sounds stunning thanks to the Naïve production team who…

Let me say at the very outset that musically Belisario is one of Donizetti’s very finest works. Dating from 1836, it came hot on the heels of Maria Stuarda and Lucia di Lammermoor and it finds the composer at the height of his lyrical powers. It had a bumpy ride to opening night (see the excellent booklet) but despite cast problems and a libretto that had been turned down by a previous management Donizetti enjoyed something of a triumph. The young librettist, Salvadore Cammerano, was to become one of the century’s greatest, but here he fails to make everything add up to a satisfying dramatic whole. Belisario’s embittered wife, who in the first act looks set to be the prima donna, fails to put in an appearance in Act Two, while the tenor who turns out to be her long-lost child is an old saw long past its sell-by. The composer too made the odd slip – the perky second tune of the overture for example is at odds with the tragic nature of Belisario’s fall from grace, blinding and eventual demise. BUT, that aside, there are some superb scenes to be relished, especially in a performance as compelling as the one delivered here by the……

Driving to the Sydney Opera House the other day, I became aware of the number of signs and directions along the way. Speed signs, Go Back You Are Going the Wrong Way signs, merge carefully signs, reduce speed signs. As I merged and indicated and sped as directed I had a sense that two aspects of my life had also merged – driving in Australia is like playing a page of classical music, with the government composer telling us what to do and when to do it. Rallentando here, softer there, play with passion here, don’t overtake the bassoons on the left there. All composers give performance information in their scores, but some go way overboard in their directions. Mahler was probably the worst, his symphonies littered with lengthy Germanic directions. In one symphony he writes: “An dieser Stelle wirken die Posaunen, Violinen und Viol. nur im Notfalle mit, wenn es gilt den Chor vor “Fallen” zu bewahren” (In this passage the trombones, violins and violas should play only if necessary to keep the chorus from going flat). What excellent advice, once you’ve hired a German translator to work out what he was saying. Here’s another: “Muss so schwach erklingen,…