Percussionists are a resourceful bunch. Not only must they master an endless battery of instruments (there will always be new objects to hit), they’re often required to build their repertoire from scratch. Here Claire Edwardes sets out to expand the range of short pieces available for marimba by arranging various piano miniatures alongside newly-composed Australian works. It’s a win-win: Aussies get more exposure and percussionists get a whole lot more music to play. Edwardes has already proven her entrepreneurship. She started out as a pianist, only switching to percussion at university. She won the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performer Award and spent a decade within Europe’s new music scene. Since returning home she’s co-directed the innovative Ensemble Offspring and premiered more than her share of new works.  This CD lays the old and the new side by side, a rewarding strategy that brings freshness and surprise. It’s revealing to hear the snaking counterpoint of JS Bach alongside the bounce of Matthias Schmitt, for instance, or the brittle Russians Shostakovich and Kabalevsky bookending Gerard Brophy’s loose energy. Some composers are especially well served by their percussive transformation; I wouldn’t have imagined Schumann’s rich pianism suiting the marimba but his… Continue reading Get unlimited…

In 90 years’ time when DG releases a Great Conductors of the 21st-Century series, Dudamel will surely be in it.

It’s fitting that this exciting new release from classical guitarist Karin Schaupp and the Flinders Quartet should end with Australian composer Phillip Houghton’s In Amber. As Houghton writes in his booklet note, “I drew parallels between a fossil ‘frozen/suspended’ in amberstone and the sound frozen/suspended inside the stringed instruments waiting to be brought to life.” One can just as easily talk about music being frozen/suspended inside a score, waiting to be brought to life, as well as living, breathing performances being frozen/suspended inside a shiny CD. Moreover, Houghton’s In Amber – its first movement filled with characterful miniature dances; its second with drones and melodies like “perfumes in a jungle” and its third with a compelling motoric intensity – summarises the whole program’s moods and ideas, bound by the sounds of plucked and bowed strings. Take Máximo Diego Pujol’s Tangata de Agosto (“August Tangata” – the latter word a conflation of “tango” and “sonata”), which recalls Piazzolla in its earthy sophistication; or Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No 4 Fandango, which fills the Viennese salon with the raucous sounds of guitar and castanets; or the anonymous arrangement of Haydn’s String Quartet No 8 in E for lute (in this case, guitar), violin, viola and… Continue reading…

Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser are two Croatian lads who have gone global after posting their two-cello version of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal on YouTube. They also happen, both, to have improbably chiselled jaws and cool hair. Now signed to Sony, they have released a debut album of covers, including Sting’s Fragile, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. Both are classically trained virtuosos of their instrument, who put plenty of verve into these rather neat arrangements. If you like your pop music played by hunky Croatian cellists, this is as good as it gets. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A striking musical chiaroscuro born in part out of the agony and the ecstasy of profound spiritual experience. 

Schubert’s final collection of songs, compiled posthumously under the title Schwanengesang, may not trace a narrative journey as unified as those mapped out in Winterreise or Die schöne Müllerin, but the most perceptive interpreters create a dramatic arc all of their own. The final disc in Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis’s triptych of the great Schubert song cycles finds them as emotionally attuned to the music and to one another as in previous volumes. Few tenors can give such potent voice to the bitterness Schubert poured into the lieder of his final year, but Padmore’s engagement with the text (well-rounded diction with plenty of “ch” in the “ach”!) and variety of tone place him among the best. His is a light instrument, but never lightweight – just listen to him bemoan carrying a world of sorrow on his shoulders in Atlas. Although he has developed a wide, almost braying vibrato in recent years, this actually works in his favour here, adding searing stabs of melodic intensity. And he can still rein it in for a warm, pure line, as he does when gently enfolding us in the Serenade.  He could not have asked for a more steadfast, sensitive… Continue reading…

If this release was intended as a snapshot or showcase for the current state of the Sydney Symphony, it would zoom into the five-star category. The playing is some of the best I’ve ever heard from them. The felicities are too numerous to mention here, but I’ll cite the quadruple flute passage in the first movement development; the horns cover themselves with glory in the slow movement and Emma Matthews is fine in the finale, sounding innocent and then appropriately dreamy. Alas, a clear recommendation is not that simple – the playing and engineering are outstanding, but I’m still not convinced that Ashkenazy has anything especially interesting to say about Mahler. The first movement hums along well enough but lacks any lyrical intensity. I’m not suggesting Mengelbergian rubato pulling the music out of shape, but a slightly more varied pulse and more inflection would be welcome. The second movement effectively blends rustic awkwardness with a dark undercurrent (as with the equivalent movement in the Sixth Symphony, where it’s hard to tell whether the music depicts children at play or a sinister troupe of marionettes). The “Heaven’s Gate” climax in the adagio (relatively swift, like Klemperer’s) is well… Continue reading Get unlimited…

With highly regarded complete editions of Schubert’s and Schumann’s songs to their name, Hyperion has embarked on another such venture, this time recording all the lieder of Brahms. Angelika Kirchschlager and Graham Johnson inaugurated the series last year, and now soprano Christine Schäfer, also accompanied by Johnson, has made her contribution. More appealing, if hardly less cheerful, than its miserable cover photo, this recital shows Schäfer on top form, combining artistry with a crystal-clear voice. Her rather delicate soprano is at its loveliest in the ethereal Ophelia-Lieder and in the six folksongs which end the recital, but when expansiveness is required – as in the Mädchenfluch – she’s quite compelling. Schäfer’s bright, compact soprano is not one in which to luxuriate: her word painting is excellent, but her palette is inherently limited, and there’s a certain whiteness to the voice which occasionally grows wearying, particularly in such a stylistically similar program. But her sweetness of timbre and her textual acuity usually win out in the end, and she has a gift for capturing the emotional vicissitudes of this often turbulent poetry – the intense, sometimes erotic Mädchenlieder (not written as a cycle, but evidently envisaged by the… Continue reading Get unlimited…

No one can yearn like a Russian. Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony has yearning aplenty. Beneath the suave, almost louche, art deco glamour – clearly influenced by his years in the United States – there lies an undercurrent of nostalgia for Mother Russia. I believe it was Jascha Heifetz who once described Rachmaninov’s Piano Trio as “silk underwear music”. It was probably one of those you-had-to-be-there moments but in listening to this gorgeous score, I think I know what he meant. My favourite moment is the first movement’s second subject, which sidles in with cellos wafting above woodwind melismas. Gianandrea Noseda’s finesse in letting the music unfold naturally and seductively enhances its beauty. It’s hard not to fall back on that overworked adjective “elusive” to describe the kaleidoscopic, mercurial moods of this symphony. The central movement, with its plangent horn calls and swooning harp and then its strange sudden lurch into a scherzo is just as haunting. The finale is a 20th-century take on a Russian dance. The BBC Philharmonic is in top form in all departments and Noseda allows every strand of melody to shine through in what can only be described as a luminous recording.  The two… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Palestrina’s name was synonymous with musical perfection even before his death in 1594, and his reputation as one of the great masters of late-Renaissance, post-Tridentine church polyphony is still as great as it ever was. The Sixteen’s name could equally be said to be synonymous with musical perfection, and the UK choir’s recordings of English, Spanish and Italian Renaissance masterpieces are prized for their combination of passion and precision. This first volume in a projected series dedicated to a selection of Palestrina’s 104 masses and great motet cycle of the biblical Song of Songs takes as its theme the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven. The centrepiece is the Missa Assumpta Est Maria; also included are a selection of shorter works such as the motet on which the mass is based and three of the Song of Songs most closely associated with Marian devotion. The performances are, as one would expect, first-rate, and an antidote to the sometimes bloodless approach to this music by The Tallis Scholars. Palestrina’s music moves swiftly and seamlessly between densely woven yet sharply delineated polyphony and rich homophony; furthermore, each part hovers or trembles, drops in or out, plunges or soars according… Continue reading…

An outstanding debut for spirited young guitarist, Zane Banks.

Were it not for those vastly entertaining orchestral works which form the composer’s Roman Triptych, we might know little more about him than we do about his less illustrious contemporaries Malipiero, Casella and Pizetti. Colourful explosions of orchestral brilliance such as The Fountains of Rome are what propelled the composer to public notice. What is most striking about the pieces on this CD is how unlike those famous works they are, in sound and style. In fact, apart from Rossiniana, which is reasonably well known, the other items on this album don’t sound like Respighi at all; nor do they sound particularly Italian. A good percentage of this music has been rescued by conductor Salvatore Di Vittorio, who is credited with completing some of the orchestrations. How much is down to him is difficult to ascertain from the notes. Clearly, he has reinvigorated works such as the Aria and Violin Concerto, completing the latter’s last movement – which the composer had barely begun. It is quite beautiful and well worth our attention, but don’t go expecting The Pines of Rome with violin obbligato. It is far more subdued and ruminative, and none the worse for that. The orchestral… Continue reading…