Petrenko is transforming what has always been a good orchestra into an undeniably outstanding one, catapulting the RLPO into the very top of the second tier – no mean achievement and no faint praise. Their recent Rachmaninov Third Symphony was a harbinger about Petrenko’s calibre as a Rachmaninov interpreter, and this superb account of No 2 more than fulfills that promise. Few, if any other Romantic symphonies, need as convincing a pulse in the first movement. By the end of the Largo and Allegro Moderato, Petrenko has delivered slow-release incandescence with both conviction and that uniquely Slavic sense of yearning. He’s not afraid to employ quite striking rubatos without resorting to sentimental overstatement, and the formidable climaxes are beautifully integrated. The second-movement Scherzo with its initial Prokofiev-like spikiness is easier to bring off, but in the Adagio we’re back in the emotional heartland with a polished but tender clarinet solo. The finale erupts spectacularly, Petrenko’s lively but sensible pace reassuring me that this really was a vintage Rach 2, not one which fell at the last hurdle. It’s thrilling how he gradually gathers momentum in the Allegro Vivace. The other works, orchestral excerpts from the opera Aleko, are well chosen…

Scary time, the 1930s, when the Stalinist denunciation of Soviet artists made for serious anxiety among composers just waiting for the dreaded knock at the door from the secret police, and some of the justifiable paranoia is manifested in the music itself. Take the searing opening solo melody in Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto for instance, with which Dutch star Janine Jansen opens her outstanding new all- Prokofiev disc. It’s a restless, unsettled kind of thing, and that first movement as a whole is a musical cat on a hot tin roof, jumping at its own shadows, and made all the more disconcerting by the intellectual clarity of the performance and the equivalent audio definition in a masterly production job by Decca’s engineers. Not that it’s all Reds-under-the-bed hysteria. The concerto’s slow movement is a gloriously long-arching melody, even if the mechanical accompaniment provides a menacing, albeit subtle, reminder of the machinery of war parading by outside. Every note here is made to count, and while it never fully engages the emotions, Jansen again demonstrates why her first recording back in 2004 sold 300,000 copies. She is the violinist for the age, detached yet precise, cool but considered, and when she……

Last week was a theatrical rollercoaster. Sandwiched between two roles on stage, an over indulgent American mother and a medieval German nun, I observed and absorbed a diverse range of shows too; from a west end style musical to a family opera, an adapted European classic to a Canadian comedy, and a experimental development project too. And like any such ride, it brought some highs, as well as quite a few lows. I love the theatre, for many reasons. To quote one of my heroes, Cate Blanchett, it’s "life affirming, exhilarating". For those of us who know that feeling, who have experienced theatre's magic, whether watching it or being part of it, we know that there is nothing quite like it. We move on quickly from the lows, knowing that the highs will come. But sadly not everyone sees it that way and unfortunately, there are times when I can understand why. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was wonderful fun for children (mine, aged six, seven and eight, loved it) but it was an expensive and rather disappointing afternoon as an adult. I’d read up on the tour and so wasn’t expecting the marvels of a Matilda or a Mary Poppins…

I do like a classic. Whether it be a nice suit, a Citroën DS or a fantastic Valpollicella, I have always had a kind of magnetic attraction to those things which just exude style, quality, beautiful craftsmanship, eloquence and distinction. They elevate what could be mundane into the sublime. Italian Baroque icon Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) always fitted into this category for me. About 5 years after I moved to the Netherlands, I finally had the opportunity to do something about my passion for his music. I thought Corelli was a nice topic for my first blog column for Limelight as 2013 is a big Corelli anniversary year and because the NDA’s Corelli project, I’m delighted to be able to report, was recently chosen as a top five highlight of the 30 year history of the Holland Festival of Early Music Utrecht. The project also featured many Australians, including Baroque violinist Rachael Beesley in the solo role. Corelli was a legendary generator of musical style. In the 18th century, he was the very personification of the Italianicity which the rest of Europe lusted after. He was the Dizzy Gillespie, the Angus Young, the Grace Kelly, the Faye Dunaway, the Catherine Deneuve…

A cri de coeur across periods, cultures and artforms, this package comprising a 1,191- page illustrated hardcover book in eight languages including Hebrew and Arabic, a Multichannel hybrid SACD and a collection of postcard-size artwork is priceless – that said, it costs under $50. As Jordi Savall writes in the introduction to the book, Pro Pacem is a project that “makes a plea for a world without war or terrorism and for total nuclear disarmament.” Essentially, Pro Pacem forms a small but profoundly eloquent contribution to the cross-cultural dialogue necessary to create the conditions for world peace. Thus the music, drawn from Alia Vox’s extensive catalogue, brings East – Armenia, China, India, Israel and Turkey – and West
 – Belgium, England, Estonia, Greece, Italy and Spain – in song and instrumental music, much of which is sacred or whose texts deal with themes of peace. There is Binchois’ Da pacem, and Gregorian and Sibylline chant, the latter sung with great beauty and delicacy by Savall’s late wife, Montserrat Figueras. There is Hebrew prayer and Turkish improvisation on the Turkish lute. There are excerpts from the Koran. There is polyphony by musical giants such as Lassus and Guerrero. There is instrumental…

As a young virtuoso, Claudio Arrau was renowned for playing long programs and tackling technically challenging works like Albeniz’s Iberia. From mid-life onwards he concentrated on the German tradition and mainstream repertoire. He reached his full maturity in the mid-1950s, when most of the recordings in the EMI box were made. This set contains the five Beethoven concertos, a selection of sonatas, and concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. Arrau was never a mere technician. In a 1970s broadcast
 of Brahms’s Second Concerto, he swayed and grimaced like a
 soul in torment. That is both the upside and downside of these recordings: he approaches each forte as if it was Mount Everest, and handles lyrical themes as if officiating at High Mass. Take
 the limpid piano melody in the second movement of Grieg’s concerto: its innate simplicity eludes him as he inflects every note with emotional significance. In his desire to make the instrument resonate he overuses the sustaining pedal, which would have been effective in a vast auditorium but turns muddy in the studio. By contrast, Alceo Galliera and the Philharmonia, who accompany most of the concertos, are a model of clarity. Arrau’s Beethoven is fascinating. Often…

A student of Berio, Richter is
 a stylistic magpie whose music 
is accessible yet inventive and thought-provoking.

In an interview for the long defunct ABC Radio National program The Score (for which I was Producer at the time), Frans Brüggen said of Mozart symphonies: “There is no such thing as ‘interpretation’.” While this might at first sound a trifle odd, I think after all this time I can see what he meant. 
He wanted the composer to speak
 for himself. Brüggen established
 the Orchestra of the Eighteenth
 Century in a very specific
 manner. He recruited Europe’s
 leading specialists in historically 
informed performance practice 
to make his band. It is in fact a
 combination of expert practitioners
 who are also are researchers and avid collaborators. He wanted it to be (and it still is) a sort of permanent workshop, where 
the members are always working together and listening to each other in the search 
for authentic sonorities. The goal in all this pursuit of sound colours is to allow the music to reveal itself. Previous cycles of Beethoven symphonies have had as their star not the composer, but the conductor. Herbert von Karajan’s cycles especially come to mind of course (as good
 as they are, they are completely different in intent and certainly in effect). The Dutch critic……

An excellent monograph of one of our most prominent composers.

In 19th-century Poland, composers faced a real dilemma. The country had been partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria, super-powers with a vested interest in keeping nationalistic music firmly out of the public domain. That left
 you two options. The first was 
to become a composer-virtuoso (the path taken by Paderewski along the way to becoming Polish Prime Minister) so you might be able to export your music to an international audience. Juliusz Zarębski (1854-85), complete with flamboyant shock of hair, was one such showman, gaining a European reputation for his performances on a double keyboard piano. The other possibility was to stay at home and teach, the sedate choice of Władysław Żeleński (1837-1921). These two gentlemen of two roads diverg’d are the subjects of this fascinating disc from Hyperion. Zarębski’s Piano Quintet, a 40-minute work as rich in melody as it is strong on motivic development, was heard in Martha Argerich’s impassioned 2011 Lugano Festival release. The composer was clearly something of an innovator, employing bold tonal shifts and quirky rhythmic devices. The 
 Żeleński Piano Quartet is entirely new to CD but should make many friends on this showing: as tuneful as the Zarębski but with an added layer……

Strange as it may seem now, Prokofiev’s most famous ballet had a particularly painful birth. The Soviet director Adrian Piotrovsky suggested a ballet adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy to the composer in 1935, but the Bolshoi pronounced the finished work “undanceable”. The Kirov agreed to stage Romeo and Juliet (complete with happy ending!) but plans were rapidly shelved after the dramaturge
 was denounced in the Pravda article Balletic Falsehood. It was his libretto for Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream that 
had offended. Piotrovsky was arrested and shot the following year – a definite nadir for the arts in Stalin’s Russia. The revised version (now with acceptable tragic ending) didn’t see the light of day until 1940, when the Bolshoi turned out to be able to dance it after all. Since then it has conquered the world, danced by the likes of Fonteyn and Nureyev. The three suites are regular concert items. Sydney Symphony chief Vladimir Ashkenazy clearly identifies strongly with the work, having recorded it for Decca
 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra ten years ago. He rightly treats it as Prokofiev’s most elevated piece – sincere, emotional and unflagging in its inspiration. So how does the new CD stack up? On…

So apparently Benjamin Britten once died, and to prove it the BBC is making a docu-drama about his final decade. Well, it is the centenary, after all, and the English sure do love him. It’s taken most of the art out of guessing what Oxford ensembles might programme over the course of 2013. Actually, it turns out that some of Britten’s lesser-known choral music is pretty extraordinary. This livens things up no end if you happen to sing with Schola Cantorum of Oxford (as I do, having unaccountably passed the audition back in October). Schola has collaborated with the BBC several times recently on composer profile pieces, and we duly fronted up to the chapel at St Peter’s College – which is also our usual rehearsal space – on 11 February. Our task: to be filmed singing three Britten numbers while not stuffing up too badly or accidentally looking into a camera. Upon arrival, it was a bit like the first five minutes of a Doctor Who episode – all frosted blue light and dry ice, with unknown backlit entities lumbering through the murkiness from time to time. Sadly, we weren’t permitted to pretend to land a TARDIS, nor even…