A title like The Chopin Album, might lead you to expect a disc from the latest pianistic talent, but happily on this occasion it’s a collection of repertoire for cello and piano duo from close friends, cellist Sol Gabetta and pianist Bertrand Chamayou. The stunning centrepiece is the significant Cello Sonata in G Minor. The complexity of the first movement alone is a marvel, and it’s a shame the piece isn’t more widely known. Gabetta talks about approaching Chopin as a bel canto composer, who was always aware of a ‘vocal’ line in the music. It’s a fitting analogy and Chamayou and Gabetta show great sensitivity towards the primary melody, while still uncovering Chopin’s rich polyphony. The Largo movement is achingly beautiful, without becoming too overly sentimental. The militaristic Polonaise Brilliante provides both Chamayou and Gabetta with plenty of virtuosic scope and both performers relish the opportunity. The remainder of the album serves as a tribute to the friendship between Chopin and respected cellist Auguste-Joseph Franchomme. The two men co-authored the Grand Duo Concertant and worked independently on arrangements and transcriptions of Chopin’s music. An original work of Franchomme’s is included on the album, the Nocturne for Cello and Piano…

Although this is a debut recording by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Soloists, the six players each boast impressive individual track records. As part of the SCO itself, they previously made a recording of wind concerti by Weber, which in turn inspired the creation of the ensemble on this disc. As the liner notes point out, throughout Mozart’s life, one constant was that he always wrote music for entertainment. Whether that music was designed to be played at parties or banquets, at evenings out or formal ceremonies, it’s abundantly clear that Mozart took all this good-natured music very seriously. The recording opens with the Serenade in E Flat, K375. There’s a well-known letter to his father in which Mozart describes his delight at discovering the musicians performing the work beneath his window as a surprise one evening. Similarly, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Soloists present us as listeners with a pleasant surprise, as they (somewhat unusually) play the original version of this work for pairs of clarinets, horns and bassoons. Normally, the Serenade in E Flat features a pair of oboes as well, but clarinettists Maximiliano Martin and William Stafford produce some wonderfully shaded timbres, creating more than a strong…

Throughout his career, Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas was engaged in exploring the music of his homeland, both ancient and modern. This second volume of works presents an insight into the eclectic, and frequently retrospective, sound world of his works for string orchestra. The first and last tracks feature Farkas’s arrangements of Hungarian 16th and 17th-century dances. These suites have a cute, antiquated feel – think Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, or Warlock’s Capriol Suite. The same is true of the Finnish Popular Dances. The Aria e Rondo all’Ungherese also looks backwards, but with a more romantic feel, channeling Grieg’s Holberg Suite. The Musica Pentatonica has a different language, energised by angular phrases and rhythms with a pentatonic harmonic framework reminiscent of Holst and the English pastoralists. The András Jelky Suite, named for an 18th-century Hungarian adventurer, is a welcome contrast. Embracing the language of dissonance but retaining a spirit of romanticism, it contains more colourful harmonies than Farkas’s arrangements of early music. The Concertino for Trumpet and Strings is similarly more adventurous, with a clear and articulate performance by trumpet soloist László Tóth. The Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra’s performance is solid throughout, under the direction of violinists Gyula Stuller and…

Fresh recordings of Olivier Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux Étoiles… come along only rarely. Scored for four soloists – piano, French horn, glockenspiel and xylorimba – really every player in Messiaen’s orchestra needs to be a virtuosic soloist too. He gently warns anyone fancying their chances that his woodwind writing is exceptionally tough, while few composers throw out as many hardcore challenges to orchestral percussionists as Messiaen. But given that Des Canyons aux Étoiles… (From the canyons to the stars…) is a philosophical and spiritual portrait in sound of the Bryce Canyon in Utah, with its shape-shifting rock structures and vistas of sheer science-fiction awe, it would have been odd had Messiaen not attempted to accentuate the primacy of sound over music by recalibrating the expected relationships between harmony, melody and rhythm. Because Messiaen’s hills are not so much alive with the sound of music – these canyons are brought alive with the sound of sound, this extraordinary score inviting your ears to footslog through a living, breathing, evolving aural environment. The first sound you hear is a faraway French horn call, here the excellent John Ryan, which opens the aperture like a wide-angled lens. Then Messiaen zooms in close: woodwind……

Having previously encountered Thomas Søndergård’s fine work on the Dacapo label I have high hopes for this projected cycle of Sibelius Symphonies on Linn, which should appeal to those who like their Sibelius cool, crisp and bracing. Tempi are swift while phrasing is thankfully free of mannerisms. Textures and sonority are clear and limpid but not overly refined so essential Sibelian cragginess is retained. The first movement of the Second is beautifully judged with its pulsating chords ideally weighted, but the second movement is too matter-of-fact; his reluctance to take a breath robs the piece of narrative flow. The Scherzo whizzes along but the build-up to the last movement seems to embarrass the conductor’s modernist sensibility so is rushed. When it arrives the finale is splendid, despite reticent trumpets. The early pages of the Seventh can meander in slack hands. Søndergård’s firm grip keeps it to the point, steering it home with a sense of inevitability. The BBC NOW play superbly for their new chief with strings really digging in. Those strings are well captured, but the recording, while marvellously transparent at the front of the orchestra is a little blurred at the rear to the detriment of brass and…

Like his South American predecessor, Jorge Bolet, Nelson Freire is having an Indian Summer and well-deserved recognition. Like Bolet, he’s always been admired but somewhat taken for granted. Now, he’s almost lionised. This CD contains Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto and a collection of short pieces. I recently read a fascinating but credible observation that, of major composers, Chopin has more of his oeuvre in the repertoire than any other. That notwithstanding, his works for piano and orchestra have often been considered poor relations to his solo piano music, most of which is, admittedly, sublime. Who am I to complain? One reviewer described the concerto orchestrations as “staid”. I would prefer wooden or dour. No matter: this is a wonderful showcase for Freire’s art, and he brings pellucid tone and ineffable elegance with a sublime reading of the slow movement. The G-Flat Impromptu is not so much dispatched as caressed with finesse and rubato. The Fourth Ballade is certainly sterner stuff and Freire possesses the requisite steeliness without ever sacrificing lyricism or coherence. The Berceuse, my joint favourite Chopin work, is played with a style that rivals Lipatti’s Barcarolle (my other joint favourite): I just didn’t want it to end. The Mazurkas…

Planets in perfect alignment: David Robertson leads the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's thoughtful journey through the cosmos.

★★★★★ Donizetti was one of the most prolific opera composers of all time, an appealingly personable fellow (if you read the letters), and an extraordinary professional capable of turning out a work in just a few weeks. That very facility though has led to a general dismissal of his music as too easy, rushed, derivative, or worse. Les Martyrs disproves all of these. A late work (1840), this grandest of his French grand operas was written simultaneously with the slighter, yet inexplicably more popular La Fille du Régiment, but the two works couldn’t be more different – one a trivially sucrose French confection, the other a profound meditation on faith and duty. But while Daughter of the Regiment went on to conquer the world, Les Martyrs sank without a trace. That latter statement isn’t entirely true. Les Martyrs was itself an expanded reworking of Poliuto, an opera Donizetti had written for Naples that fell foul of the censors and so never made it to the stage. Poliuto has been championed intermittently over the years (there’s a superb live version with Callas, Corelli and Bastianini) and Glyndebourne have just given its British premiere, but Les Martyrs is a horse of a…

Finally, one of Britain’s finest ensembles tackles the final masterpiece of one of Britain’s finest composers. The results are, as you’d expect, spectacular. Henry Purcell left the semi-opera The Indian Queen unfinished at his death in 1695 and it fell to his brother Daniel to supply a happy ending of sorts in the form of The Masque of Hymen for the 1696 revival. Consequently, audiences would have heard less music at the work’s Theatre Royal premiere in 1695 than they would have in any of Purcell’s previous semi-operas such as The Fairy Queen, from which the present work borrows a dance (more recycling sees the inclusion of the overture from the ode Come Ye Sons of Art). But what the music might lack in quantity, it more than makes up for in quality. Purcell devoted every ounce of his skill and artistry to bring to life John Dryden and Sir Robert Howard’s convoluted play about the Mexican Queen Zempoalla’s war with the Montezuma-led Peruvians, and the airs, dances, duets, trios and choruses perfectly manifest those “Italian and French styles English’d” so typical of this English Orpheus. The recording opens with an amusing pre-show entertainment, Purcell’s satirical three-voice catch To all…

★★★★☆ Interested in the contenders for the bulkiest opera of all time? Look no further than Havergal Brian’s The Tigers. Yes, if you thought his Gothic Symphony was impractical you ain’t seen nothing yet! Composed between 1917 and 1919, and scored for massive orchestra (including five tubas, harmonica, three timpani players, thunder machine, ship’s siren, two vibraphones, tubaphone(!) and organ), the work has never been staged. The full score was lost until the Brian Society put out a reward for its recovery, and the plucky BBC made a radio recording back in 1983. That performance, thanks to Testament, is now available on three discs. The opera concerns the (at times mystifying) bumbling antics of a regiment known as The Tigers on manoeuvres in the Home Counties. But Brian isn’t just offering a semi-Straussian comic opera. There are dream ballets for gargoyles come to life, a commedia dell’arte fantasy and the massive opening scene on Hampstead Heath (which calls for an elephant!) culminates in a huge set of orchestral variations on Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly. Ambitious! The fine cast comprises many of the top British singers of the day (including the likes of Teresa Cahill, Marilyn Hill-Smith, Alan Opie and…

It’s unfortunate that at 51, French tenor Roberto Alagna is probably best remembered for walking off after being booed by the La Scala claque, all captured on YouTube. And then there were tempestuous years with second wife Angela Gheorghiu, which prompted the nickname “the Ceausescus” and for Jonathan Miller to dub them the Bonnie and Clyde of opera. But there have been triumphs as well. From his earliest days, listening to his Sicilian dad singing Italian songs on building sites around Paris, and cathartic moments when he saw Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso and later met Luciano Pavarotti at a record signing, eventually auditioning for him, Alagna’s life has resembled the synopsis of an operatic potboiler. Hence the title of his latest album, My Life Is An Opera, which comes with the most excruciating liner notes I have read for a while and on which he forsakes his earlier crossover hits for some mainly bel canto and verismo arias. In among them he includes a couple of surprises – Ernest Reyer’s Esprits, gardiens des ces lieux vénérés and Karl Goldmark’s Magische Töne, for example, as well as a short excerpt from his brother’s opera The Last Day of a…

★★★★☆ This splendid DVD of Norwegian director Stefan Herheim’s 2013 Salzburg Festival production of Die Meistersinger draws a strong visual analogy between Wagner’s comic opera and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It works well, aided by a superlative cast, some knockout staging and the full Vienna Philharmonic and Staatsopernchor under conductor Daniele Gatti. The sets comprise oversized Biedermeier furniture and fittings, emphasising the fairytale feeling. Roberto Sacca as Eurovision song candidate Walther works well with Anna Gabler convincing as his eventual bride. The show, of course, belongs to Hans Sachs, and in Michael Volle we have a particularly fine one, slapstick when playing off Markus Werba’s pedantic, conniving Beckmesser, but also with a very human touch. There are some clever theatrical moments, but look out for the Apprentices’ Dance when hand puppets make way for the full-size thing. Busts of Beethoven, Goethe and Schopenhauer – representing German art to be protected from foreign influences – act as silent witnesses until the exquisite quintet when Sachs unveils the noticeably larger bust of Wagner himself. There is some obligatory on-stage carnality in the crowd scenes but nothing too hard-core. Gatti (shortly to take up his new position as chief conductor of the Concertgebouw),…