The Canadian bass-baritone says there's no excuse for the Finnish composer's songs not to be present in more recital programmes.

For her first Queensland Music Festival, Noonan is asking Australians to take part in a concert called You’re The Voice.

Acacia Quartet and Sally Whitwell bear the bays at this year's Festival.

Currently singing with the OA chorus in Carmen, young soprano Laura Scandizzo is about to perform Race for the Sky.

The conductor explains the allure of the German Romantics ahead of his performance with Sydney Chamber Choir.

Considering her sizable discography, 2015’s Fleurs was surprisingly Carolyn Sampson’s first song recital. It turned out a corker and set a very high bar for a follow-up. I can happily report that this release comfortably vaults that bar. The clever thematic programming continues, this time in various settings of Symbolist Decadent Paul Verlaine’s moonlit evocations. Debussy’s setting of Fêtes Galantes, Ariettes Oubliées and Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson are old favourites along with Hahn’s lovely L’heure Exquise and Tous Deux, but the five settings by Poldowski, aka Régine Wieniawski (daughter of the violin composer), are an unfamiliar treat; accomplished vocal writing, gorgeous harmonies and imaginative accompaniments – her En Sourdine is delicious. The performances are breathtakingly beautiful. As expected from the impeccable Sampson there is some astonishingly pure and precisely controlled vocalism, but lest she be typecast as an early music specialist there has been a perceptible increase in richness and colour over the last few years. Her delivery is mostly intimate and confessional, the full voice used sparingly so at key moments when it opens out and expands the result is spine-tingling. She has an ideal partner in Joseph Middleton, a superb musician with a keen ear… Continue reading Get…

Once the remit of boy choristers and early music specialists only, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater has evolved into a star vehicle.

Spem in alium is undoubtedly one of the great masterpieces of English polyphony; in a sense the last great flowering of a magnificent tradition. Like any great masterpiece, Tallis’s astounding 40-part motet can be admired from any number of different vantage points.   In this final volume of their Tallis survey, Carwood and The Cardinall’s Musick give us two versions – the original setting with its Latin text as well its contemporaneous adaptation to an English text. Both cast different lights on the music. Pleading and sorrowful, the Latin words create a sombre mood while the English text has a more jubilant effect. Choosing to record the work in a relatively dry acoustic also emphasises the composer’s extraordinary skill in manipulating such heroic forces and also the singers’ wonderful precision and unanimity of tone. The rest reminds us of Tallis’s uncanny ability to bend to the musical and religious dictates of his age, thus ensuring his head remained attached to his shoulders. Amongst deservedly popular works in Latin and English we have O Sacrum Convivium, Hear the Voice and Prayer and Verily, Verily, I Say Unto You. At the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

Born in Venice about 1670 and dying in Vienna in 1736, Antonio Caldara not only had the good fortune to span different geographical musical centres, but also changes in musical style and taste. This programme of his music mainly devoted to the Virgin demonstrates some of these changes. The Venetian polychoral school is admirably represented by the double-choir Magnificat which opens (and also receives its first recording). A 16-part setting of the Crucifixus has more of a dramatic, high baroque sensibility akin to that of Caldara’s almost exact contemporary, Antonio Lotti. Making their first appearance in the catalogue, two charming concerted works, Ave Maris Stella and Salve Regina demonstrate Caldara’s skill in handling solo voices and smaller forces. Australian-born tenor Robert Macfarlane sings with admirable grace and clarity in the latter while soprano Nathalie Seelig and alto Franziska Markowitsch make a well matched pair in the former. String and continuo accompaniments are both sympathetic and engaging. The major work is an extended setting of the Stabat Mater. With baroque techniques like descending chromatic bass lines and stark dissonances, Caldara paints a colourful picture of the sorrowing Mary at the foot of the cross. The music is well… Continue reading Get…

It seems beyond John Butt’s Dunedin Consort to issue a recording that is less than perfect, and this ravishing account of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is no exception. Not only does the clarity and beauty of the singing and instrumental playing blow anything else out of the water; Butt’s approach to realising Bach’s intentions under very specific performing conditions is committed yet flexible and open-minded.   For example, he uses two SATB choirs comprising just one voice per part – the maximum number Bach may have had at his disposal at any one time. Of the six cantatas comprising the oratorio, I, III and VI are sung by one choir, II, IV and V by the other. For those cantatas with trumpet parts (I, III and VI) he uses the “redundant” choir as “ripienists” to reinforce the part in the choruses and chorales – in reality, Bach would have used “apprentice” singers here. As Butt writes in his excellent booklet note, “The aim then is to try and present the range of choral scoring that Bach seems to have used, from doubled vocal lines through to single lines for parts… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

Sony Australia has chosen the Sydney radio host to feature on the inaugural album for its new Masterworks label.

Musically mind-blowing – a highly talented, intelligent collaborative period music ensemble.