If you’ve worn out your copy of Georges Cziffra playing Liszt’s Transcendental Studies – and why wouldn’t you, because he da man – and are in the market for a newer model, should you direct your hard-earned cash towards Daniil Trifonov on Deutsche Grammophon or Kirill Gerstein on Myrios? Both are newly released and attracting praise like superlatives are about to outlawed by presidential executive order. Like everything Trifonov touches, his Transcendental Studies are proudly personal statements and wilfully so on occasion – witness, for example, the roof-rocking intensity of the fourth study, Mazeppa, where the volatile harmony is allowed to churn up the structure, and the ‘recitativo’ section of the coda plays out as something approaching a mad-scene. Gerstein – who plays the definitive 1852 version of Liszt’s Twelve Etudes – sits more obviously in a tradition that stretches back to Cziffra. Much has been written about how Gerstein’s background in jazz lends his performance an improvisational, power-to-the-moment flow. But despite his studies on the jazz course at Berklee and mentoring by jazz vibraphone guru Gary Burton, I’m not sure I hear it like that. At every turn, Gerstein peels the minutiae’s minutiae out from Liszt’s notation. The spread…

This a strange compilation with a convoluted concept, can’t help but be amazed at the sound of the ASMF.

When they were 14, the Jerusalem Quartet were considered The Monkees of the classical world because they were “manufactured” by the Jerusalem Music Centre. Since then, with one change of personnel (violist Ori Kam replacing Amihai Grosz in 2010), they have established themselves in the top echelon of chamber groups. They continue their wide and impressive discography with this awe-inspiring reading of three of Béla Bartók’s six quartets. Led by the charismatic Alexander Pavlovsky, the Jerusalems are a tight, exciting unit, brilliant in attack but also uncannily sensitive. Sergei Bresler’s violin sparks off Pavlovksy’s and Kam is the equal of his predecessor in every respect. Kyril Zlotnikov, playing one of Jacqueline du Pré’s instruments loaned to him by Daniel Barenboim, is a formidable cellist, driving and astute. Together they bring out every nuance of these awe-inspiring works, from the Fourth’s scurrying insect-like ‘night music’ of the prestissimo second movement to the heart-rending mesto finale of the Sixth, composed at a time when Bartók was down on his uppers and mourning his mother’s death. The Jerusalems brought the house down when they played the Allegretto Pizzicato as an encore when they were here in 2016 on their seventh Musica Viva tour….

Combining fine classical musicianship with pop hits from the 70s to 90s, is not your average mixtape.

Both works are robustly Germanic and finely written; the surprise is that they are not better known.

Three's a charm for Gidon: DG fields a dream team to bring this elegiac music to life.

Berlin Philharmonic principal clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer co-founded the Bürgenstock Festival, which takes place near Lucerne, in 2011, and his Berlin Phil colleagues Emmanuel Pahud and Albrecht Meyer are regular guests. This recording is the third released by Ottensamer and friends as part of the Bürgenstock Festival Edition. As Ottensamer writes in his booklet notes, “The spirit of the Mannheim School, being all about finding new ways of making music and trying to unify all aspects of musicianship, lives on in the mindset of our festival.” Thus New Era pays homage to, via orchestral music featuring solo clarinet, a selection of composers associated with or inspired by the extraordinary music coming out of the Mannheim court of the Elector of Pfalzbayern in the 18th century – music that indeed heralded a new era. Johann Stamitz (1717–1757) was one of the chief instigators of the spirit of relentless musical experimentation and innovation that prevailed at court during this time. His Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in B Flat opens, with Ottensamer performing on a modern clarinet, as he does in the following work, Franz Danzi’s Concertino for Clarinet, Bassoon and Orchestra in B Flat, where he is joined by Meyer playing… Continue…

This lovely disc from Hyperion completes brilliant young British violinist Jack Liebeck’s survey of the three Bruch concertos with the excellent BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins. At its heart is the Second Violin Concerto which, despite being championed by Perlman and Heifitz, still remains shamefully neglected in the concert hall. Proudly romantic with big singing melodies and death-defying solo passages, it has all the hallmarks of the great 19th century barnstormers and shows that the ever-popular First Concerto was no fluke. Liebeck and his smooth-toned Guadagnini take it on with magnificent aplomb. Originally composed for the Spanish virtuoso Sarasate, the 36-year-old Londoner shows he has golden tone, character to spare and a dazzling technique. The disc’s other three works are equally enjoyable. Bruch considered the Adagio Appassionato one of his best works. Konzertstück started out as the ‘Fourth Concerto’ but Bruch refused to add a third movement. He probably felt that not much needed to be said after its glorious Adagio. Bruch described In Memoriam, a single movement which starts with an ominous tattoo from the timpani, as “a lamentation, a kind of instrumental elegy”. Liebeck, seen in Australia last year with Trio Dali for Musica Viva, gets…

Chimes and gentle winds open A Celestial Map of the Sky – the title track on this disc by British-American composer Tarik O’Regan – before the Hallé, led by Sir Mark Elder, is joined by the choir. The luminous opening soon gives way to powerful, driving intensity, O’Regan setting extracts of poetic texts (by Walt Whitman, Mahmood Jamal and more) that reflect his response to a pair of woodcuts – star charts – by Albrecht Dürer. Haunting vocal meditations are entwined with a glittering, astral score. Jamie Philips conducts the Hallé in the remaining works. O’Regan takes the Adagio of JS Bach’s third Violin Sonata (BWV 1005) as his jumping off point in Latent Manifest. Solo violin is joined by harp and percussion, O’Regan extrapolating Bach’s quadruple-stops into a whorl of vivid orchestral colour and sizzling rhythms. Both Raï and Chaâbi (which was commissioned for the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s 2012 tour) derive from O’Regan’s memories of childhood visits to relatives in Algeria and Morocco. Raï is full of fierce strings, rhythmic drumming and bright momentum from the Hallé, while shifting string textures in Chaâbi create a reflective mood. The finale is Fragments from Heart of Darkness, a dramatic… Continue reading…

Davis' Melbourne Ives cycle reaches its complex conclusion.

Based on Blake’s illustrations of Job’s sufferings from a part of the Bible dripping with Old Testament vindictiveness, Vaughan Williams was commissioned in 1927 to write A Masque for Dancing. In one of his grandest musical utterances, the glorious Saraband of the Sons of God puts the work on the highest level. The exquisite violin solo for the Altar Dance and Elihu’s Dance (a close relative of The Lark Ascending) adds to the work’s beauty. In contrast, the music for the devil is appropriately rowdy, and I’ve not heard the wailing saxophone of Job’s Comforters better played. The dramatic organ entry in this excellent recording is overwhelming. If there is a connection with the Ninth Symphony it is the sinister use of saxophones, all three of them moody and foreboding. The slow movement is distinguished by a lovely flugelhorn solo; the Scherzo is quirky if somewhat scrappy. In the final movement we are back to the composer’s dreamier mood as he drifts away with those mysterious saxophones, seemingly reaching on and on. His last symphony may not be one his most approachable works, but as his swansong it is austere and compelling; more in line… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

What does it mean to write a violin concerto in the 21st century? These three works, all written for the phenomenal Renaud Capuçon, consciously avoid the show-stealing nature of barn-burners of the past, and all are shaped more as tone poems than concertos. Wolfgang Rihm and Pascal Dusapin casting the soloist as discursive storyteller, barely allowing Renaud Capuçon a moment’s rest, while Bruno Mantovani treats orchestra and soloist as more equal partners. Dusapin’s work is in some ways the most tied to the past, a three-movement concerto with two extended solo cadenzas. The title, Aufgang, can mean both “rising/emerging” and “stairs”, and at the very outset, our risen violinist of “light” steps high above the “darkness” of the orchestra. The long, slow central movement provides a much-needed beating heart for this work, a heartfelt tune sung over simple accompaniment. Rihm is a prolific composer, and Poem of the Painter is his sixth violin concerto. According to the composer, the violin “embodies [expressionist artist Max Beckmann’s] brush as it moves across the canvas”. The soloist weaves rhapsodic tales, cajoling us, humouring us, assaulting us, while the orchestra provides light and shade, with sounds of dark rolling thunder, pained screams, luxurious beds…