Across its eight movements, this secular mass is a focused refinement of what Westlake does best.

In one of the most singularly gorgeous recordings to have come across my desk in recent months, Zurich-born cellist Christian Poltéra and British pianist Kathryn Stott explore some of Dvořák’s greatest melodies in new transcriptions by Poltéra. Silent Woods was arranged by the composer himself from the original version for piano four hands; in fact, the only compositions originally written for cello here are the Rondo in G Minor and the Polonaise in A. It seems extraordinary now to think that Dvořák wasn’t immediately enamoured of the cello’s sound, finding it “nasal” in the upper register and “grumbling” in the lower, as the booklet notes recall. But how he would have adored the warm, emotionally expansive playing of Poltéra – and Stott for that matter: a superb soloist in her own right and an ever-sensitive accompanist.  The opening Sonatina in G, originally for violin and piano and dedicated to Dvořák’s children, is all brightness shot through with pentatonic flavours; Poltéra and Stott animate the music with the perfect balance of poise and exuberance. And if, in the following Rondo in G, the players seem for the most part simply to be letting… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4…

>Following the success of his English and Spanish albums, Stephen Hough has come up with this thoughtfully planned, beautifully executed French album. Typically for Hough, the repertoire is anything but predictable. It opens with the familiar strains of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The Gallic connection lies in the transcription by the pianist Alfred Cortot, who was actually Swiss. Hough himself is a transcriber of note (or notes) and so we have his keyboard arrangements of Pizzicati from Delibes’ ballet Sylvia and Massenet’s song Crépuscule. Among the rarely played works are the charming Automne by Cécile Chaminade and Alkan’s quirky La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer. Two popular encores are included: Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso and Debussy’s Clair de lune, the latter sounding not at all hackneyed due to the surrounding context. There are multiple selections by Fauré and Poulenc, and the recital ends with a longer work, Liszt’s Réminiscences of Halévy’s opera La Juive. Hough invariably hones in on the specific quality that defines each piece. In the Ravel, it is humour, an aspect that pianists often neglect in their desire to remind us how difficult this music is to… Continue reading Get…

There are big choices here but crucially, every moment of this intimate collaboration has been thought through.

ARCAM (RDAC WIRELESS) PRICE: $775 ★★★★★ For a while, Arcam had the “affordable-DAC-by-a-venerable-hi-fi-brand” sector all to itself with its 2010 rDAC. As this test shows, it’s now under pressure, but it’s a measure of just how right Arcam got the original that this wireless variant is still up there. This sturdy little box features the most important connections: optical and coaxial digital and asynchronous USB inputs, plus stereo RCA output. Wireless connection requires an rWave or rWand streaming dongle. Build quality is impeccable. Hard-wired preference The wireless aspect will appeal, but there’s no denying the rDAC sounds its most effective when hard-wired to a source. We used a MacBook for the bulk of our listening and for every genre of music, at every file size, the Arcam proved an adaptable and likeable device. A 24/192 file of REM’s Country Feedback reveals everything that’s admirable about the rDAC. It’s a punchy, dynamic listen, with an emphasis on excitement. That’s not to suggest it’s short on detail, but its real strengths concern scale, soundstaging and separation. Listening to the other units, however, highlights the rDAC’s relative lack of low-frequency finesse. Extension is impressive, and there’s admirable tonal variation, but where the leading…

Avi Avital is a young man from Be’er Sheva determined (we are told) to bring the mandolin and its repertoire to a wider audience. Trained in Israel and Italy and backed by the Deutsche Grammophon marketing machine (it’s hard to see how he can be ‘the instrument’s first international superstar’ on his debut album!), this disc eschews the traditional Vivaldis and Hummels in favour of Avital’s own arrangements of Bach concerti. There’s a good precedent for such treatment, as both the harpsichord concerti presented here are thought to have started life as works for other instruments. Avital is at his most convincing in the works originally for keyboard (a mandolin being not that different from the ‘plucked’ strings of a harpsichord). The opening D Minor concerto goes with a great swing and sense of joie de vivre. The Largo of the G Minor concerto is positively enchanting, with a sound world close to Vivaldi’s. The A Minor violin concerto can feel a bit Spartan, missing the longer-held notes, as can the E Minor flute sonata, but these are minor quibbles. Needless to say, Avital’s technique is excellent and given the tiny fret board of his instrument, his playing is impressively…

Whoever said grand sweeping melodies were a thing of the past? Grant Foster clearly has a penchant for the archetype of the brooding Russian virtuoso pianist-composer, despite being based in Bowral. You may remember Foster from his in-depth Limelight interview a few months back. After initially studying in Sydney he set off for Paris and London, where he built up a solid reputation as a pianist and composer before returning to Australia to settle in rural NSW. This CD is a follow up to The Music of Grant Foster and features two main works: the Russian-inspired The Pearl of Dubai suite for piano, cello and orchestra, and a setting of Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol for tenor and piano. As a bonus there is a DVD of the Ballad and part of the suite played live in concert. The overall impression of Foster’s orchestral music is that of a stirring and decadent black-and-white film score, albeit with super-smooth edges and superior sound quality. The pieces are unashamedly Romantic, as if Rachmaninov had been cryogenically frozen and thawed out in the 21st century. The Pearl of Dubai is the most ambitious work here, a set of mini tone poems…

A virtuosic collection of new Aussie works for sax and piano.

Don’t judge this CD by its cover. No doubt the packaging went through a rigorous design process by expert minimalists, but somehow the portrait of virtuoso Israeli-Swedish flautist Sharon Bezaly, who recorded this disc of largely contemporary repertoire during her 2009 Australian tour with the ACO, still looks like a bad Polaroid, with the shadows left in and a random font or two slapped on as an afterthought. BIS certainly can’t have been relying on the familiarity or commercial appeal of the composer names to compensate. Ultimately, this CD featuring the most famous golden flute since James Galway’s and music by José Serebrier, Adina Izarra, Carl Vine and Ginastera, has just two things going for it – the quality of the South American/Australian music and the excellence of the performances. As she’s demonstrated on many previous recordings for BIS, Bezaly is an incredible flautist – fearless and truly an “attacking” player when it comes to the technically challenging bits – so she’s always exciting to listen to. And some of the repertoire here, largely unknown though it is, is terrific. Serebrier was once a long-serving conductor on the ABC orchestral network and he remains a prodigious recording artist, but… Continue…

Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt has been one of classical music’s great iconoclasts now for well over 50 years. Always challenging our preconceptions, he invariably comes up with something fresh and this delightful double disc is no exception. His stated aim is to create a “revolution” in the way we listen to 19th-century dance music, and in particular the waltz which he sees as reflecting a social shift from high-brow, concert hall fare to a genuinely egalitarian music. He also makes a good case that Strauss and Lanner’s dance bands may well have outshone the Viennese court and theatre orchestras in technique and ability to master a wide repertoire. So how does he go about convincing us? First of all, he uses Concentus Musicus Wien, his own period band. That smaller, leaner string tone helps, but in addition, Harnoncourt conjures up all manner of different tones with no less than ten different types of trumpet and five different types of clarinet! In a word, he takes the “sound” seriously and I must say he has a great deal of fun along the way. His starting point is Mozart’s late dance music which frequently utilises “Turkish” instrumentation to express Austria’s confidence in…

A new disc by Pieter Wispelwey is always a cause for great rejoicing and this one is no exception. I doubt that Mendelssohn’s Cello Sonata No 2 (in D, Op 58) has ever sounded as joyous and carefree as it does here. In the opening movement the players have an unbridled enthusiasm that at first surprises but then wins the listener over. The delicate wit of the ensuing Allegretto scherzando with its pizzicato passages is perfectly realised and is admirably balanced by the plangent Adagio. Mendelssohn’s Song without Words for cello and piano is offered as another example of Wispelwey’s superb expressiveness, while arrangements of three of Chopin’s waltzes by the Russian virtuoso Karl Davydov, including the famous Minute Waltz, show off the cellist’s quicksilver dexterity and amazing lightness of touch. That Chopin’s Cello Sonata caused the composer so much creative grief is scarcely apparent in this ardent performance. Here, as in the Mendelssohn, the total abandonment to the music’s high romanticism results in utterly magnetic music-making. In particular, the Scherzo stands out as a compelling blend of drama and lyricism. Giacometti’s use of an 1837 Érard piano in conjunction with Wispelwey’s 1760 Guadagnini cello adds further authenticity to these…

No one is ever going to accuse British-born, Perth-educated soprano Lisa Harper-Brown of chasing commercial success. Consisting of Australian art songs for soprano and piano, her The Poet Sings recital disc will no doubt send cash-registers into rigor mortis. Harper-Brown is a terrific singer – a touch stentorian and single-gestured perhaps – but in there Viking horns and all, giving these neglected, indeed virtually unknown, remnants of Australia’s British Empire history every opportunity to stake a belated claim to greatness. Have we been too neglectful of these treasures? Probably not on this evidence, but the disc’s seven Roy Agnew songs are moving. Geoffrey Allen’s Two Chinese Songs, Op 1 are worthy of historical study, as they were composed 20 years before it became fashionable for any Australian besides Grainger to look to the north for musical inspiration, while Raymond Hanson’s five songs – led by a lovely setting of Tagore – demonstrate not just his giftsas a composer, but their free-flowing piano parts also show his experience as an accompanist. Using Shakespearean texts, Paul Paviour wrote the seven songs that give the CD its title, doing valiant (if not always successful) battle against better-known musical settings of them. This defiantly…