When Paul Dean pulled me aside in the corridor to quickly tell me that I would be joining the Australian World Orchestra for 2013 as a part of their academy, all I could do was blink and nod (although this is not an uncommon reaction from a viola player). It was a few minutes later that his words actually sank in.  The AWO is an orchestra founded two years ago, formed with the aim to bring the best Australian orchestral players together from around the world. Among them this year you might glimpse an awe-struck girl sitting among the violas – that would be me. Both in 2011 and this year, the AWO has included a few students as a part of the AWO Academy, designed to allow younger musicians the chance to play alongside some of the most successful Australian instrumentalists around. We’re there to listen, to learn, and to discover the depth of talent that we sometimes forget comes from our home, thinking that Australians could never live up to the standard of classical music centres like Europe and America. Since then, a few things have happened – emails have been exchanged, practice parts sent, printed, and scrawled…

If a label like ECM chooses to back a young composer it’s safe to assume she’s beyond just showing promise. And if Janine Jansen and Maxim Rysanov come to the party with works composed especially for them, their endorsement affirms a major new talent. Meet Dobrinka Tabakova, born in Bulgaria in 1980 but based in London since her early teens. At once forward-looking and steeped in old-school romanticism, the music is sensually attuned to timbre and sweeping melody, with just enough Eastern European bite and folk-derived earthiness lurking beneath the polished surface (listen to the lilting, modal solo in Suite in Old Style’s third movement). Tabakova has a gift for string writing that connects the English lyricism of Vaughan Williams and Elgar to the glassier, sombre textures of Arvo Pärt – the music is always brimming with personality, even if it’s not always immediately apparent that it’s her own. Jansen, the dedicatee of Such Different Paths, steps out of her spotlight to indulge her chamber proclivities, bringing sweetly focused lightness to the driving rhythms. In the dark- hued Concerto for Cello and Strings, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra play at the level of their solist, Latvian Kristina Blaumane (principal cellist of……

This utterly imposing performance of Berlioz’s grandest work was one of the last great triumphs of Sir Colin Davis’s long and illustrious career.

It is rather frightening to contemplate the sheer swiftness with which Widor found his mature style. Every phrase on this CD dates from Widor’s twenties, and though he wrote much equally good music later on, he seldom if ever surpassed his achievements here. Alas, outside France almost no organists now play these two works in concert, unless they have prepared a cycle of all ten Widor symphonies. Readers still unfamiliar with the composer’s idiom will find delightful surprises aplenty. To pluck out instances at random: in No 1, the richly Franckian Adagio, the once celebrated Marche Pontificale with its Elgarian tinge, and the Meditation which in the reticent pathos would not have disgraced a Fauré Barcarolle; in No 2, the prelude’s proto- Reger chromaticism, the Salve Regina movement’s effortless mystic rapture, and the Toccata’s harmonic detours (a thousand pities that this Toccata has been so comprehensively overshadowed by its hackneyed, inferior counterpart from No 5). Perth-based Joseph Nolan favours a moderate approach. At times he might be thought a little too cautious, and he is not always as exuberant as Widor’s admittedly puzzling metronome marks would imply. For example, Widor gave a crotchet = 100 indication for No 1’s Allegretto;…

If you’ve taken a look at its hideous cover art, and somehow managed to avoid having its offensively kitschy image burned permanently onto your retinas, and similarly survived a read-through of the tedious booklet without lapsing into a word-induced coma, you might finally get around to listening to the music contained in Nicholas Vines’ album, Torrid Nature Scenes. And you might even discover that, despite the visual signs to the contrary, this young Australian composer’s music is surprisingly good – damn good, in fact. The collection comprises three of his recent chamber pieces, The Butcher of Brisbane, The Economy of Wax and Torrid Nature Scene, performed by the splendidly named American new music ensemble Callithumpian Consort and soloists. All three works are rich in atmospheric soundscapes, gestural impact, complex rhythmic overlaying, and fresh thematic ideas. Particularly impressive is the album’s title work, Torrid Nature Scene, for solo soprano, mezzo-soprano and chamber group. Described in typically vivid language in the booklet as “a squelchy, romping obscenity” (sigh), the seven-movement work plays as an inverted pastorale. Bawdy neo-Shakespearian poetry by Andrew Robbie is set to music that captivates from beginning to end, bathing us in ever-evolving textures, and steering us through a……

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 2 in G is played much less often than its popular predecessor.

This CD hails from a 1983 live Royal Festival Hall concert at a time when this symphony was much less known than it is now. In the intervening years, many of the usual suspects have recorded it, often as part of an integral cycle. This recording, however, wears its age particularly well! Rozhdestvenksy had been at the apex of Shostakovich interpreters for years, even in 1983, and his experience shows in the flowing tempo and rhythmic variation in the huge adagio arc of the first movement (almost the length of the other movements combined) without losing either drama or intensity. The string playing is first rate. A relentless unremitting trudge often casts a shadow from which the remainder of the work never recovers. Even by the standards of Shostakovich’s highly original approach to symphonic structure, the Eighth is certainly problematic. Rozhdestvensky’s account of the two bizarrely juxtaposed scherzi brings out the usual ‘bi-polar’ elements of Shostakovich’s scores in this vein: manic almost febrile gaiety alternating with militaristic aggression and grotesque hecticness. The trumpet episode in the second demonstrates the fine quality of the soloists in the London Philharmonic at that time. The final two movements pose more interpretive challenges: perhaps…

  Couperin’s three surviving Leçons de Ténèbres (settings of texts from the Lamentations of Jeremiah to be sung at the office of Tenebrae in Holy Week) are surely some of the greatest glories of the French Baroque and a validation of the musical taste of Louis XIV. The first two lessons are scored for just one voice, and then to heighten the dramatic and spiritual intensity of the music, the third lesson is scored for two voices. English soprano Carolyn Sampson and Norwegian mezzo Marianne Beate Kielland deploy their different voices to great effect in the first two lessons, and when they come together we hear how complementary their instruments are, giving the music an admirable amount of light and shade, particularly in the urgent final refrain, “Jerusalem, return to the Lord, your God”. Robert King and his consort afford nuanced support for the singers, opting for traditional organ continuo. For an alternative view with harpsichord continuo, the account with William Christie, Les Arts Florissants and sopranos Sophie Daneman and Patricia Petibon remains a classic. Apart from strong performances in the main work, the added appeal of this newcomer lies in the generous selection of makeweights. These include Couperin’s famous motet…

The second half of the Belcea Quartet’s Beethoven cycle, again mixing-and-matching quartets from all three periods, is a culmination of the modern era’s tendency to turn Beethoven from the voice of God into a highly-strung mortal, whose music is as skittish as a like-whatever teenager texting. Forget the played-in- blood, unified drama of the Jurassic-Era American recordings by the Yale and Guarneri Quartets, or the modern European classic from the Takács. The London-based Belceas, now nearing their 20th anniversary, are all about character-playing, revealing a big-personality Beethoven whose moods and emotions discharge on a hair-trigger. These live performances from the Snape Maltings Hall in Aldeburgh are excellently-recorded and equally well-played, and it’s up to the listener to try to keep up with the caffeinated hyper-activity as each new musical impulse is animated with the energy of a game-show host. Some of it’s deeply felt, like the slow movement of the first Razoumovsky Quartet, for instance, but it never dwells there, as if settlement on a definitive point-of-view is impossible when there are still so many musical hyperlinks to click on. The DNA of any complete Beethoven string quartet cycle, though, is contained in the epic slow movement of Op 132….

The reclusive Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) wrote almost exclusively for the piano. His fascinating music, which is finally becoming known and admired by a wider audience, is among the most individual and technically demanding of any in the Romantic era. His challenging Twelve Studies Op 35 and the titanic Symphony for Solo Piano (from Op 39) have previously been given outstanding recordings by the Australian pianist Stephanie McCallum. The series entitled Recueils de Chants (literally: Compilations of Songs) are rather different. In five books of six pieces each, composed between 1857 and 1872, these are pieces on a smaller scale, modeled to some extent on Mendelssohn’s Songs without words but displaying a broader expressive range. Some have evocative titles such as Chant de guerre and Esprit follets, while others are simply given tempo indications. Each book ends with a Barcarolle, where the quirky essence of the composer’s individuality is most evident. While these Chants do not require the sheer stamina of Alkan’s larger works, they do require a skillful and sympathetic pianist who can tease out the lyricism and bring point to the composer’s distinctive style. McCallum is across every aspect of this music, exploring the collection’s diversity with apparent ease –…

As one of Verdi’s early works, (it was staged in 1846 just prior to Macbeth) Attila has not always been received particularly well. However, what we see in this DVD is a full blooded Italian opera with some thrilling music and effective dramatic highlights. If some of the music is familiar it may be that it has come to you through Charles Mackerras’ resourceful ballet score for The Lady and the Fool, where he drafted music from Verdi’s lesser known operas to great effect. There are some seven versions on CD, four on DVD; the one to beat appears to be from La Scala under Riccardo Muti, with Cheryl Studer and Samuel Ramey. Even though this production from the Mariinsky is excellent, La Scala’s production and soloists are superior. Abdrazakov’s Attila is very good, until compared to Ramey’s splendid savage. Markarova fields a fiery Odabella, the woman who (in this opera) kills Attila in the final scene, but Studer simply wipes the floor with her at La Scala. In the part of the knight, Foretso, both Skorokhodov in this performance and Kaludi Kaludov at La Scala acquit themselves well. Mariinsky’s Pope Leo (Addikeyev) is piously wet. The character of Attila…

Performances of Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto range from the romantic/rhapsodic (Shaham/ Boulez/BPO) to the gritty, abrasive and uncompromising (Mullova), with Mutter somewhere in- between. Thomas Zehetmair, a native of Salzburg, has been around for a long time but I wouldn’t have had him down as an arch exponent of the mighty Bartók Second Violin Concerto, one of the greatest concertos for any instrument of the twentieth century. Well, he is! There’s something excitingly kaleidoscopic and mercurial about this 1995 performance. His rhythms are nimble, his tone slender but full of coruscating folkloric colours. One thing I initially found disconcerting are his tempi: he takes 35’ over the work which makes it sound quite different; Shaham takes over 40’ which, I think, is closer to the norm. The Budapest Festival Orchestra, generally regarded for some years as Hungary’s premier ensemble, especially under Ivan Fischer, enhance the soloist and conductor in what amounts to a symphonic accompaniment wonderfully captured. The companion piece is Bartók’s First Violin Concerto, an early work sometimes dismissed as an expression of love-sickness over his inamorata, Stefi Geyer. It wasn’t discovered until after both the composer and Geyer had died, in 1956. It’s OK but very much a…