Chamber music is the ideal medium for composers with a knack for polyphony. Here we have a fascinating disc of string trios by two exact contemporaries who were among the victims of Hitler’s Germany. Hans Gál fled to Scotland and lived a long (if obscure) life, while the Czech Hans Krása was interned at Terezin and killed in Auschwitz in 1944. While their music differs in intensity, both men were skilled at writing counterpoint so all these works are full of interest. Gál’s Serenade dates from 1932. Notable for its high spirits, it follows in the wake of similar trios by Beethoven and Dohnányi. The Trio of 1971 is understandably more autumnal in quality (apart from its Mendelssohnian Scherzo) and features a set of gentle, lyrical variations as its final movement. Krása’s music was heavily influenced by the Second Viennese School and is made of tougher stuff. Tanec (or Dance) is a short work evoking the sound of trains, with a tender chorale in the middle section. In the powerful Passacaglia and Fugue, the underlying emotional impetus stretches these highly structured forms almost to breaking point in Krása’s final composition. The performances by the Ensemble Epomeo are beyond praise: lively,…

At just 32 years of age, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is already the hottest property in classical music. Both on the mean streets of Caracas with his Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, and closer to Hollywood Boulevard with the LA Philharmonic, who’ve just re-signed him as Chief Conductor until 2019, and even over in Gothenburg in Europe, he’s presiding over a musical revolution. And his Mahler recordings have already played a big part in it, whether it’s the Fifth Symphony with the South American kids, the live DVD of the Eighth, or various download-only recordings of other Mahler masterpieces, all given extraordinarily compelling readings. But none of those previous releases could truly prepare you for an encounter with this, Dudamel’s first full-scale Mahler CD with the LA Philharmonic in arguably the greatest symphony of them all, the Ninth. Recorded live last year before an audience with jaws on floor at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, it is incredibly well played (with Australia’s own Andrew Bain on first horn) and beautifully recorded by the Deutsche Grammophon engineers. But it’s Dudamel’s command of the overall architecture, and in particular his unerring… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

I made my debut at the Theatre du Chatelet last year conducting the Paris premiere of John Adams' first, and extremely complicated, opera Nixon in China. That, along with the Canadian Opera Company's production of Janacek's From the House of the Dead, was the most pleasurable new production I have conducted. It may have been a risk to programme this work but it paid off in spades as the French went literally wild for it and it received rave reviews in every paper and magazine worldwide. It led to the Director of the Chatelet, Jean-Luc Choplin, who is very daring in his programming, wanting to stretch the boundaries further by mounting Adams' third opera I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky, in which he asked me to return and conduct and premieres here on June 11. "Ceiling" is not your average "opera". It was written by Adams in 1995 and centres around the LA earthquake of 1994. Adams wanted to make a departure from the true operatic world of his first two operas and try his hand at the musicals from Gershwin, Bernstein etc. that he had grown up with. The result is a mix…

As the last five crates were dumped unceremoniously into a ute and sped out of my life, I groped for some musical comfort, flimsy cheque quivering in my hand. What consolation could Bach’s cantatas hold for me? They were, after all, among the few essentials that escaped the dreaded CD cull. I’d been doing plenty of Weinen and Klagen (BWV12) about selling off my lovingly and painstakingly amassed library, but Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig (Ah how fleeting, ah how futile, BWV26) seemed to sum up both the transaction and the artifacts themselves.  Saying au revoir to 95 per cent of my CDs brings me closer to a long-held dream of one day moving to Paris: turns out you need money to live la vie bohème, and without all that beloved baggage it feels as if I have little left to stay for. Oh, that’s not true; I have plenty of friends. In fact, when word got out that everything must go, from Adams to Zelenka, musical acquaintances I hadn’t seen in years were popping round “for tea”.  A warning to hoarders contemplating a similar tabula rasa: you will not rake in a huge profit. Some conservatorium libraries won’t even accept bequests, lacking the manpower to manage…

When the renowned flautist Johann Joachim Quantz visited Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples in 1725, it seemed he inspired the ageing composer, hitherto ambivalent about wind instruments, to write some flute sonatas for him. Not only that; in the years that followed, the younger composers of the Neapolitan School also wrote specifically for the recorder – the flauto dolce, or transverse flute. This had not happened in Naples before, and only once again in the same period, during an amateur flautist’s reign as Viceroy between 1728 and 1733. So it is that a talented player often inspires composers. Likewise, recorder virtuoso Maurice Steger inspires his fellow instrumentalists here, with compelling performances of music from the mid-1720s by Alessandro Scarlatti and his “spiritual heirs”. Using a range of alto recorders and, in the Leo concerto, a soprano recorder, Steger leads a small band comprising strings, psalterium and continuo in a selection of concertos, sinfonias and sonatas by Scarlatti father and son, Sarro, Fiorenza, Barbella, Mancini and Leo. Throughout, Steger emulates the great singers of the day such as Farinelli, with beautiful cantabile lines tastefully ornamented to complement the sparkling allegro movements. The band is superb, with violinists Fiorenza de Donatis and Andrea…

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.