Joe Chindamo is a jazz pianist with the chops of a Russian virtuoso; Zoë Black is a versatile classical fiddler who has played with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, inter alia.

This disc of mid-20th Century American piano concertos is a polished affair. Wang’s brilliant pianism is infectious and appropriately lyrical for the slow movement of Barber’s concerto. The Scottish orchestra under Peter Oundjian brings power to their role in the proceedings. Chandos maintains its usual high standard. And that should be it – but it isn’t.  The problem concerns the two jazz-influenced pieces. Simply put, Wang doesn’t swing. To give an example, the piano licks in the third movement of the Gershwin are given a scherzando treatment: impressively achieved, but not what Gershwin was getting at. Underneath the Lisztian decoration is a streetwise toughness that eludes these musicians. Copland’s early concerto is one of the few where he referenced 1920s jazz. Again, Wang does not know what to make of this element. Missing the music’s louche cheekiness, she simply sounds awkward. To hear what is missing, turn to Copland and Bernstein (Sony).  To rediscover Gershwin’s brash cityscape, try Earl Wild with the Boston Pops, or a 1954 Decca recording by Julius Katchen with Mantovani and His Orchestra (!), which is even more idiomatic. Katchen squeezes out every last drop of ragtime (as does Wild). And, fine as Wang and Oundjian are in…

This release is a sequel to the earlier Decca Sound box set. It covers the years of Decca’s analogue “Full Frequency Range Recording”, starting with the company’s earliest stereo recordings from 1954 –Ansermet conducting the Suisse Romande Orchestra in music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Balakirev and Liadov – and finishing in 1980 just prior to the advent of digital recording, with Dutoit conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in tone poems by Saint-Saëns. The bonus CD gives us the Ansermet Russian program in its original mono, for comparative purposes. Unlike the earlier box, this is not presented as a best performance collection; rather, it is designed to showcase the peak of Decca’s sound quality over those analogue decades. And indeed it does: the sound of Fistoulari’s highlights from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake holds up stunningly (recorded with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1961), not to mention Solti’s visceral Mahler Resurrection Symphony with Heather Harper, Helen Watts and the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1966. Sometimes the sound is of its time. When Decca producers recorded opera in the late 1950s and early 1960s they preferred a cavernous space with the voices set back  – an opera house acoustic – yet the clarity and presence…

How to make a spectacle out of Wagner’s last opera Parsifal? There’s the rub. Belgian company La Monnaie called on Italian avant-garde theatre director Romeo Castelluci to lend his vision to this four-hour production. The result is a Kundry dressed in white anorak and gumboots, lashings of nudity and bondage and an albino python, said by Castelluci to represent Wagner’s music, and whose ‘venom’ might be a cure. (Herpetologist’s note: Pythons are not venomous). There’s also a German shepherd dog which occasionally makes an appearance like Inspector Rex on a case. Also in the mix are 300 extras and explicit scenes in the second act where Klingsor’s castle is a cross between an S&M parlour and a gynaecologist’s consulting room. It all looks like a Pilates class gone horribly wrong. Castellucci is known for shocking audiences with violence, nudity and, on occasions, steaming piles of excrement. This was his first operatic venture. It’s difficult to imagine how he would follow this up if invited. The cast, orchestra and chorus are all solid if not exceptional. But then it can’t be easy competing with 300 extras, a dog, a snake and topless dancers with white beehive wigs. The liner notes say…

It seems a miracle that Thomas Tallis was able to survive to the ripe old age of 80 or so during the most turbulent period of English history when the monarchy veered back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism, successfully piloting his career through those treacherous waters without foundering on the rocks of religious dogma. His ability to trim his sails to the prevailing winds is evident from Andrew Carwood’s clever programme of Antiphons, Mass, Anthems and Psalms.  Opening with the lovely Anthem O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit, followed by the parody Mass Salve intemerata, complemented by more anthems and the austere Psalm Domine, quis habitabit, the disc closes with his early Votive Anthiphon, themes of which Tallis re-used for his mass.  The Cardinall’s Musick sounds glorious with gleaming sopranos (no breathy boy treble impersonations here), firm and individually characterised voices and a stronger than usual projection. Their warm rich tones are a refreshing change from the cool restraint usually heard here; the slight edge to the choir’s timbre clarifies the counterpoint and avoids the over-refinement that can often turn this repertoire into a bland ill-defined soup. This is part of a series so one hopes we don’t have…

This excellent and extremely well-filled CD reminded me, even more forcefully than the recent and equally superb James Ehnes traversal of Prokofiev’s violin oeuvre, what a Janus-like composer he was. My other reaction was one of awe-struck admiration for Roger Woodward’s complete mastery of both sides of Prokofiev’s musical and creative personality.  Don’t be put off by the 1991 recording date: the sound from the ABC’s Sir Eugene Goossens Hall, is excellent. This CD is like a marvellous anthology of short stories that you dip into, not recommended for digesting in one go. Much of the music was composed when Prokofiev was very young. The Sarcasmes Op 17 (1912-14), the Four Etudes, Op 2 (1909) and Suggestion diabolique (1910-12) are among his angriest, most percussive, frenetic and radical keyboard works, yet they are so much more assimilable and create more of an adrenalin rush than anything Schoenberg was writing simultaneously. Interspersed among them are the exquisite Prelude, Op 12, No 7 (1906-13) an oasis of pellucid lyricism. Likewise the Pensées “Thoughts” Op 62 (1933-4), composed when he had mellowed considerably. These are delightfully dreamy cameos, although I agree with one critic who expressed bemusement at the composer’s declaration that the second was…

Sydney-based string quartet The NOISE say they began improvising for fun – avoiding the usual through-composed repertoire.

This live performance was given in the Royal Festival Hall, London, in February 2011. The London Philharmonic has a proud Mahler tradition – they were Tennstedt’s orchestra in the 1980s – and they have released some excellent Mahler performances recently on their house label (notably Jurowski’s readings of Symphonies 1 and 2). This is another. Nézet-Séguin’s pacing of this work (with one arguable exception) is pretty much perfect. How neatly he places the explosive transition into the veritable circus march at the point in Von der Schönheit where the poem depicts a galloping steed plunging through the countryside. The all-important closing section of Der Abschied is well done too: not drawn out interminably but allowed to wind down to its last fading sixth chord in a truly affecting manner. The orchestra plays with great precision and expression throughout. The soloists are also very good. Toby Spence (to my surprise) reveals himself to have the burnished heldentenor voice required for his first and third songs, with a ringing top but also plenty of strength in the middle register. He knows what he is singing about, finding the undercurrent of desperation (just as Sarah Connolly beautifully expresses the melancholy at the heart……

‘Tis the season to swing, and I can’t imagine a more irresistible album to set Christmas in motion this year: the 1892 orchestral Nutcracker Suite we know and love, alongside Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s big-band answer to Tchaikovsky from 1960. Far from a slapdash attempt to jazz up the classics this arrangement is testament to Ellington’s particular genius (and the inventiveness of his conservatorium-trained assistant Strayhorn, who deserves his equal billing). It’s heard here not only in the first recording since the Duke’s orchestra more than 50 years ago but also in its first pairing with the original, Steve Richman conducting both versions with his New York ensemble. For a fun exercise, try mixing them up – a Tchaikovsky movement followed by its jazz counterpart. I did just that with the Dance of the Mirlitons and the cheekily renamed Toot Toot Tootie Toot (Dance of the Reed-Pipes), the latter is a miniature masterclass in Ellington’s perfectly balanced orchestration as the famous tune passes from staccato clarinets to slyly muted trumpets. It doesn’t get much steamier than the burlesque Sugar Rum Cherry, the crystalline glockenspiel replaced by Lew Tabackin’s hip-rolling, bluesy tenor sax. The whole thing runs a cool ten…

Without inviting accusations of Sydney snobbery, I think I can safely state that opera performances are not exactly a frequent occurrence in Armidale, a rural town of some 24,473 inhabitants in northern NSW. This makes the sophomore production by local company Opera New England something of a big deal – and not just for the town’s inhabitants, but for all those who believe opera can, and should, flourish outside Australia’s state capitals. Puccini’s La Bohème was the ambitious choice of opera (following on a well-received debut with Figaro last year), and it demonstrated that even a grand Romantic blockbuster can be staged in a small theatre on a small budget. All you need is an engaged community, a dash of talent and plenty of hard yakka. The cast of this production was comprised of hopeful young singers from around Australia, and I’m guessing it took little effort for them to step into the roles of passionate young artists living on the smell of an oily canvas. Many of the voices were still works-in-progress, but all the singers were able to meet the challenges of the score, some brilliantly so. As the consumptive seamstress Mimì, recent Sydney Con graduate Sarah Toth gave an assured performance,…

Strauss and Hoffmansthal’s fantastic fairytale has a reputation as a brute to stage and while expensive, requiring a heavy-duty cast of singers to do it justice its heavy symbolism and Jungian archetypes, it’s a gift to directors who can give free rein to their imagination. Sadly, most try too hard to spell out the bafflingly symbolic as seems to be the case in Jonathan Kent’s literal production which serves the human aspects well but is rather ho-hum when it comes to the other-worldly; Barak and his wife live in a squalid Laundromat while the inhabitants of the Spirit-World gad about in a colourful Russo-Oriental pastiche.  The Mariinsky singers have the necessary heft but also a great deal of Slavic wobble. Best of the bunch were the Olgas Sergeeva and Savova as the Dyer’s wife and Nurse; both threw themselves into the maelstrom and their dramatic intensity made up for the occasional ugly sound.  Gergiev’s conducting, while wildly exciting, lacks the sweeping Echt-Straussian line and while the strings make some glorious sounds the orchestra comes across as relentlessly loud and crude. An essential purchase for Gergiev fans, perhaps, but I would veer towards the Sawallisch/Munich production with its clever Kabuki-style and musical…

Colourful, inventive and utterly appealing, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is one of those works that listeners enjoy returning to again and again. All the more reason then, to have a good recording – such as this one. Stephen Layton brings his customary insight to the presentation of this series of six linked cantatas that were designed to be sung on various days of the Christmas season and gathers together an impressive group of performers that give the work a truly festive air. Chief among the many attractive features of this performance is the incisive singing and diction of the Trinity College Cambridge Choir. Jauchzet, frohlocket, the opening chorus, is given a stately swagger that establishes a wonderfully joyful mood, but equally there is no loss of rhythmic momentum in such florid choral writing as Ehre sei Gott in the second cantata. Layton’s soloists are all first rate. James Gilchrist is an excellent, honey-toned Evangelist who tells the story with clarity and conviction. Katherine Watson has a suitably angelic soprano voice, while countertenor Iestyn Davies (a Layton regular) brings warmth and musicianship to everything he sings. The rich, seasoned bass of Matthew Brook cuts an imposing figure in Grosser Herr, und starker…