The vision is simple: to bring together Australia’s successful classical musicians from around the world, to form one of the country’s most electrifying orchestras.

Organist at St Paul’s, composer for the Chapel Royal and ultimately Master of the King’s Music, Maurice Greene’s only fault, it would seem, was that
 he wasn’t Handel. His settings
 of Spenser’s Amoretti (little 
love sonnets) trace the poet’s courtship of his future wife and may be England’s first song cycle. Each of these ditties comprise as many as five contrasting sections. Greene’s setting of Spenser is generally first rate and his response to emotional mood spot-on. The Merry Cuckow, for example, begins with a “trumpet shrill” fanfare that has more than a whiff of The Beggars’ Opera. He then falls into 3⁄4 time as the mood shifts towards love, yet still manages to set the birds name to the traditional “cuck-oo” notes. He can also rise to moments of great beauty, as in One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon The Strand with it’s drooping scotch snaps. It may not have the emotional through line of a Wintereisse, but the cycle ends effectively with three mournful reflections on absent love. Benjamin Hulett’s light, focused voice and exemplary diction perfectly conveys the subtleties of Spenser’s texts. To vary the continuo, Giangiacomo Pinardi on the orbo joins Australian harpsichordist Luke Green…

For ages Haydn’s piano concertos were overshadowed by those of Mozart. It is true that Mozart’s Concertos Nos 20-27 are
 so substantial as to make Haydn’s look like trifles. The three concertos on this disc, Nos 3, 4 and 11, are in fact the only ones of Haydn actually confirmed to have been written by him. They contain all the joie de vivre we associate with this composer at his sunniest, as well as (in the G Major) a sublime slow movement that clearly influenced several composers in years 
to come, not least Beethoven. Indeed, Beethoven’s two earliest piano concertos would not exist without Haydn’s in D Major: the best known of his three.
 The first thing one notices in this recording is the tight ensemble and single-minded attack of the Violons du Roy: 
a moderately-sized string orchestra based in Quebec. (The Concertos in F and G use only string accompaniment.) These musicians play modern instruments but are historically informed in matters of vibrato and bowing. Hamelin, also Canadian, is a super virtuoso; Haydn poses no technical challenge to him whatsoever. He brings strength and colour as well as insouciance to the music. At times this team may seem a……

The legendary Brodsky Quartet – truly one of the great string quartets of our time – is currently headed to Sydney for a mid-winter feast of Shostakovich in the Sydney Opera House Utzon Room in July (performing the marathon feat of all 15 of the Russian master’s thrillingly enigmatic quartets). By way of complete contrast this
latest release from the Brits shows the group resolutely packing its buckets and spades and heading to the Mediterranean – with
a side trip to Argentina – as if intent upon their summer hols. The trip gets under way with
Hugo Wolff’s Italian Serenade, which with its racing rhythms and strong melodies is like a train trip through the Tuscan countryside. Puccini’s moving Crisantemi, on the
other hand, is an elegiac piece, written in a single sweep over the course of one night, having heard of the death of King Umberto I’s brother, the Duke of Aosta. The opera composer was so pleased with his rare venture into the mysterious realm of chamber music that he recycled it in the tragic fourth act of Manon Lescaut. Another great Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi no less, also decided to have a crack at string quartet writing, believing that the…

I used to wonder what it would have felt like to be a horse wrangler in 1893 in Massachusetts as the first American petrol-powered car drove past. You’d have had a sinking sense that things were not going to be the same, that a revolution was taking place, that horses were on the way out. I didn’t have to wonder for too long, because it turns out we are living in our own digital revolution right now, which is affecting the way we listen to and think about music. The first major change is the democratising of music. Because recording was a big, expensive operation requiring studios and massive 24-channel desks, corporations were in charge of access to who got recorded, and at the other end, radio only played the people who had been allowed through the gateway. All of that is now gone. Sure, there are still people who make decisions about what is heard or recorded, but they are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and this change is also affecting broadcast radio. In a sense, a station like ABC Classic FM is still like an old totalitarian state – everyone will listen to what is chosen for them to listen…

Those lucky enough to see and hear the Royal Concertgebouw in Sydney at the end of this year should pay particular attention when the oboe sounds the A for the big tune-up. The man producing that note will be Alexei Ogrintchouk. It might be his only solo moment for the evening, but make no mistake: this is no ordinary oboist. The 27-year-old Russian virtuoso has been steadily building an outstanding reputation as one of the leading exponents of the instrument over the past eight years with a notable series of concerts and recordings, the latest of which is this exuberant triptych of works by Mozart at his most irresistible. The centerpiece, of course, is the concerto Mozart dedicated to his friend Friedrich Ramm, oboist with the leading orchestra of his day in Mannheim, but equally delightful is the charming and engaging quartet the composer wrote for Ramm later on. Ogrintchouk is joined by the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra in this recording on the prestige Swedish label BIS. It’s a work where Mozart is bursting with ideas – especially in the final movement where you can almost sense the composer’s excitement about his new creation. Ogrintchouk’s technique and phrasing is matchless throughout…

Valentina Lisitsa virtually invented herself through social media and is supposedly the most viewed pianist on YouTube. If this is supposed to imbue her with cachet, I’m afraid it’s lost on me. The liner notes in this set read more like a media release, giving us chapter and verse about her doubts and tribulations (as if these were somehow unique to her) and adopt an unduly reverential tone, hardly worthy of a label like Decca. Since she and her husband (with whom she initially attempted a duo pianist career before abandoning it for a solo career) sank their life savings into this project and allegedly paid for the LSO, conductor and venue themselves, one can only wish them luck. One review has described this undertaking as the latter-day equivalent of vanity publishing. Lisitsa mentions that there was no rehearsal and she hadn’t met the conductor before the recording sessions. It shows in the playing – competent, the least one would expect from the LSO, but hardly incandescent. The First and Fourth concertos have never really interested me very much. The Fourth seems to try (unsuccessfully) to incorporate jazz and the slow movement has the misfortune to bear a resemblance to……

Most Baroque composers tried their hand at setting Psalm 109, including the two masters of vocal music: Handel and Vivaldi. This release couples Handel’s only Dixit Dominus with the last of Vivaldi’s three settings, which until 2005 had been mistakenly attributed to Galuppi. Between them, as a sort of solo soprano palate cleanser, is one of Vivaldi’s spectacular motets, In furore iustissimae irae. His Dixit Dominus, by contrast, is a fairly restrained setting, gently complementing the declamatory drama and whirling strings of its Handelian counterpart. Under the direction of David Bates, La Nuova Musica – a relatively new ensemble on the early music scene – renders these works with vitality and precision. Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus is delivered with disarming simplicity, Handel’s with crisp Latin diction and bright, bracing strings. Soprano Lucy Crowe ascends the florid heights of the Vivaldi motet with silvery voice and hair-raising fearlessness and there are outstanding solos from members of the choir: Helen- Jane Howells is ravishing in the Vivaldi – her “Virgam virtutis tuae” is a pearly delight – while countertenor Christopher Lowrey sings with focused beauty. With such depth of talent in the ensemble, it’s little wonder that they’ve produced such a satisfying addition…

Is there anything that 19-year-old American musical prodigy Conrad Tao can’t do? Here’s a kid whose concert party-piece is to appear as soloist in both the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto and Violin Concerto in the one concert; he’s already won eight ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards; this month he’s curating his own festival, made possible through various career grants, and now, with an exclusive contract, EMI have anointed him as the beacon of hope amid their recent slough- of-despond merger machinations. So his debut full-length piano album had better be good, right? Well it is good, refreshing even, right from the outset where he begins with the seemingly implausible choice of avant-garde polymath Meredith Monk’s Railroad (Travel Song), straight out of the contemporary American minimalist library and ultimately proving an inspired choice, both for its crossover appeal and its sense of a journey lying ahead. Here is a teenaged artist who grew up in a world where the old distinctions between high and low art, classical and pop have broken down, and where iTunes lists the great symphonies and sonatas as “Songs”. And it’s as “Songs” that he plays the selection of Rachmaninov solo piano Preludes, forming the first part…

  The son of a music critic, Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy in the mould of Mozart and Mendelssohn. His 43-minute Sinfonietta was written at the age of 15. In its lush orchestration, Romantic melodies and richly chromatic harmonies, it sounds like a tone poem by Richard Strauss. (Both Strauss and Mahler admired the young Erich). Forced to leave Vienna in the early 1930s, Korngold made a fresh start in the USA where he virtually invented the sound of Hollywood films. He was brought over by the Austrian director Max Reinhardt to adapt Mendelssohn’s music for a movie of A Midsummer Night’s Dream possibly on the basis of his earlier score for a theatrical production of Much Ado About Nothing. This is the first recording of the full incidental music. Korngold’s approach to Shakespeare is appropriately characterful, and the power he gets out of his chamber forces is extraordinary. He was truly a master of the orchestra. Storgårds and the Helsinki Philharmonic have given us several first-rate recordings of neglected music – including Korngold’s Symphony – and this disc is similarly successful. I don’t care for the pinched tenor of Mati Turi in Balthazar’s song (Sigh no more,…

  After 45 years of service, performing up to 100 concerts a year and amassing an extensive discography, the senior members of this renowned group have decided to call it a day and retire. While this valedictory release (it was recorded in 2006) seems a predictable choice with two much- loved if well-worn warhorses, it is a warm, hearted farewell that encapsulates all the virtues that have led to the group’s legendary status: unanimity of ensemble and articulation, perfect intonation and a sumptuous tonal blend second to none thanks to their four Stradivarius instruments (“The Paganini Quartet”). To expect great revelations here would be to miss the point; these performances are wise and profound, finding exactly the right tempo for every movement, rubato applied so naturally as to seem inevitable, the phrasing idiomatic and unexaggerated. They achieve that elusive goal of a great performance – the sense that it couldn’t be played any other way. Listen to the first movement of the Dvorák and marvel at the control of sonority and balance as they relax into the second subject, the tonal change registering as a warm glow of autumnal colour, or to the unforced impetus of the finale as the…

  Following on from Reinventing Guitar Vol 1, Greek classical guitarist Smaro Gregoriandou here combines innovative guitar technology with wide-ranging musicological research and a formidable technique to bring ancient sound worlds alive. For this recording Gregoriandou uses four extraordinary modern instruments: a double-course pedal guitar and a single-stringed pedal guitar with scalloped frets, both in soprano and alto sizes. It might sound gimmicky but the results speak for themselves. Take the five Scarlatti sonatas with which the program begins, all but one played on the double-course instrument. The rich, bright sonority of the harpsichord is evoked rather than made explicit, while the Iberian flavour of the music is underscored by the complex timbre and Gregoriandou’s fluid articulation and ornamentation. Bach’s famous Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV 998 benefits from the crisp, slightly dry sonority of the scalloped frets while in the following Toccata BWV 914 Gregoriandou employs the double-course instrument to great effect; the fugue is especially impressive in clarity and colour. The scalloped-fret guitar works well with the Handel items, The Harmonious Blacksmith and the Chaconne No 2. Gregoriandou’s phrasing and tonal balance is incisive and compelling, the cumulative effects the luminous offspring of the union between intellect and…