Stephen Layton's dramatic conviction makes a powerful testimony of Handel’s musical centrepiece.

The Australian mezzo is finishing off her year with Pinchgut Opera’s latest show and SwanSongs Perth. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Practice might seem the obvious answer, but the Manly Warringah Choir might have a better scheme.

Joyce DiDonato and José Carreras plus a host of festive features. And we ask the question: So you think you know Mozart? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Mairi Nicolson, Damien Beaumont and Christopher Lawrence will be leading music and opera tours in 2017. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A study in China used fMRI technology to test this hypothesis on 18 male participants. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Australian soprano and early music specialist will be teaching at the first Perth Choral Institute Summer School. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Voices shine in the concert hall, despite a programme meant for the forest.

Permission to Speak aims to explore parent-child relationships through sound, action and percussive cutlery.

The music of the Medieval and early Renaissance is a startlingly unfamiliar language for modern ears with its strange clashes and cadences. Thanks to the tireless work of scholars, specialist performers and boutique labels, nowadays we can immerse ourselves in order to become sufficiently ‘fluent’, yet one can only wonder at what emotional responses this music must have triggered in the average 14th-century listener. Next to the big names of the Burgundian School, Arnold and Hugo de Lantins were second league but their works pop up in various codices alongside Dufay and Binchois. Little is known about Arnold but even less about Hugo – we’re not even sure they were brothers – but they were both clerics in the diocese of Liège. The first evidence of their work appeared in Northern Italy. This recital by Le Miroir De Musique, a superb ensemble of four singers and six instrumentalists, offers a lovely programme of secular chansons and rondeaux interspersed with instrumental arrangements. The vocalists here strike an ideal balance of disciplined purity with an unforced, open vocal delivery. Clara Coutouly is especially enchanting in her solo turns Hélas amour, que ce qu’endure and Puis que je voy, belle,… Continue reading Get…

Listening to Alonso Lobo’s music it is easy to understand why the great Victoria considered him an equal. Having trained under Francisco Guerrero at the cathedral of Seville, Lobo was appointed as his teacher’s assistant in 1591, but was two years later appointed to the prestigious post of maestro de capilla at Toledo cathedral. There he remained for a successful decade before returning to Seville in 1604 where he worked until his death in 1617. This impressive programme begins with Guerrero’s Easter motet, Maria Magdalena et Altera Maria followed by Lobo’s own Missa Maria Magdalene. Lobo’s homage to his master is also sumptuously cast in six parts and is full of wonderfully awe-inspiring moments, such as the Et Incarnatus and the Osanna in Excelsis. Such was Lobo’s fame his music was often copied, finding its way to other countries and even to the New World. This is particularly fortunate in the case of his Lamentations. Two sets were written, but only one is performable, and that in a manuscript from 1772. Written to be performed in a darkened church during Holy Week, each lamentation begins with a letter of… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Now he is thought of as an old Dutch master, but Louis Andriessen a former apostle of Marxist modernism would doubtless shy away from such titles.