Meticulous. Polished. A perfectionist. These are terms frequently applied to Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). It is true that there is never a wasted note or an indistinct effect in his work. He is also linked inextricably to Debussy under the heading “Impressionist”, but Ravel’s music is less ethereal and his harmonic thinking conceived quite differently. (Debussy places unrelated chords in the ether; Ravel’s harmony is structured more like contemporary jazz. He employs chords of the 9th, 11th and 13th degrees of the scale but eliminates their roots.) Ravel’s personality was reserved and enigmatic – he was famously more relaxed with children than with adults – and this led to the perception that his music was merely polished surfaces. So it is, but I find tremendous heart in the melting opening of his String Quartet, or the tender closing chorus of the strangely affecting opera L’enfant et les Sortilèges. Nor does his polish make him a conservative composer. What could be more out there than Boléro? The climatic harmonic resolution is orgasmic! Scarbo from Gaspard de la nuit is extreme both in its technique and its inspiration. Virtuosity and spontaneity again combine in the rousing finale of the opera L’Heure espagnol in…

Keeping in mind that the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould would have celebrated his 80th birthday just a few months ago, Sony has seen fit to release a deluxe limited set which gathers together all of Gould’s JS Bach recordings, mostly in their original LP covers with the photogenic, iconoclastic Gould often in full focus. It is just as well that an impressive hardback book accompanies the set, thereby reproducing the liner notes (often by Gould himself) at a legible size. Of course, many regard his two wildly divergent studio recordings of the Goldberg Variations (1955 in mono, 1981 in digital stereo) as seminal, but there is much to be discovered here for the uninitiated. It should be noted, though, that as Sony has chosen to reproduce the albums as initially released, we occasionally get items overlapping throughout the set – excerpts from the Well-Tempered Clavier can also be found on the compilation Little Bach Book, for example. In this collection we have no fewer than five Goldberg recordings, including a live traversal from a late 1950s Salzburg recital and a CBC radio broadcast from as early as 1954. One wonders why certain concerti are repeated, and whether the stereo remix of…

What a journey it’s been. Since 1987, Australian classical group Guitar Trek has been at the forefront of commissioning new works for guitar quartet, as well as working with luthiers to develop different-size guitars to form a true guitar family: treble, standard, baritone and bass (steel as well as nylon string guitars are utilised). This recording, actually made in 2007, has been released to celebrate 25 years of Guitar Trek and features works by some of Australia’s best-known composers for the instrument: Nigel Westlake, Phillip Houghton, Richard Charlton and Martin Wesley-Smith. The Guitar Trek line-up here features Timothy Kain, Minh Le Hoang, Daniel McKay and Harold Gretton (it’s since changed, with Bradley Kunda and Matt Withers replacing McKay and Gretton). If Westlake’s Six Fish scintillates with shimmering water, pointillistic textures and playful melodies, Houghton’s Nocturne, originally for piano, is a study in meditative if occasionally ruffled calm and moonlit passages. Charlton’s Capricorn Skies is “an attempt to capture in sound the mood or resonance of a variety of Australian skies and landscapes”. It’s a tour-de-force of sound-painting that finds Guitar Trek at its most dramatically expansive. The following non-linear Wave Radiance by Houghton, who describes it as a “sonic event”…

You wouldn’t have thought it perhaps, but the humble trio sonata (commonly defined as two violin lines plus continuo) was at the cutting edge of new music circa 1600. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in Italy, the cradle of the stile moderno as created by Cacini and Monteverdi. This delightful disc from London Baroque is the sixth of a series of eight chasing the history of the trio sonata across Europe. It should rightly be labelled the first, however, exploring as it does the form from embryonic beginnings through to its full flowering with Arcangelo Corelli. As always with new movements in music, there is a fascinating coalface at which numerous composers hew away, as yet unsure of what boundaries will be imposed upon them. Thus we have examples of canzonas, sinfonias, chaconnes, passacaglias or just plain popular dances, many of them in infectious triple time. Amongst numerous highlights are Buonamente’s haunting variations on La Romanesca, a pair of skipping Ciaconas from Merula and Cazzati and sprightly  sonatas from the likes of Castello, Legrenzi and Falconiero. Perhaps the strangest find is Marini’s Sonata Sopra Fuggi Dolente Core, which turns out to be a set of charming variations on the…

Simply put, this is a superb disc. Artists and repertoire are a perfect match – and what repertoire! Schubert’s Quintet is one of those pieces where every idea is musical gold and the juxtaposition of those ideas creates a totally captivating masterpiece. No matter that the work lasts some 55 minutes: chronological time seems hardly to register at all. In fact, there are moments (like the outer sections of the second-movement Adagio) where time seems utterly suspended and we are given a glimpse of eternity. This extraordinary outpouring from the very end of Schubert’s all too brief life is given a deeply thoughtful and beautifully polished reading by the Takács with guest cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, who fits seamlessly into the musical fabric. Underpinning the many glories of this recording is an exceptional sense of ensemble that generates the most finely gradated variations in timbre and texture. (The first two movements abound in wonderful examples of subtle colouring.) From the very first chord that emerges from sonic darkness, it is clear that the players will not shy away from probing the complexity of emotion that Schubert presents in this piece. The constantly changing light and shade of the music is movingly…

Staging Wagner’s epic four-part Der Ring Des Nibelungen is the greatest challenge that an opera house can face. The Met’s latest effort, staged by Canadian director Robert Lepage, has been taken out of the opera house and into cinemas all over the world, and is now available in an 8-DVD set. The live performances have taken a bit of a critical battering so how does the small-screen release stack up? First of all, the positives: this is the best looking, best sounding and generally one of the best sung Ring Cycles that you will find.  The high-definition picture is breathtaking in its clarity, while the sound is beautifully engineered to give a wide, natural perspective. The singers have clearly all been miked and every word comes over loud and clear, regardless of stage position or volume of orchestra. The conducting is of a high level, too, with James Levine’s 40 years of experience paying dividends in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, while Fabio Luisi is a solid substitute in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Lepage’s brief was to produce something traditional enough to satisfy the Met’s conservative support base while utilising his reputation for visual wizardry to realise Wagner’s dream for the…

Australian audiences experienced Alina Ibragimova’s light, luminous tone firsthand in her recitals with pianist Cédric Tiberghien. It’s a sound as suited to the beloved Mendelssohn concerto as the 27-year-old violinist is to her partners on this disc, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. On gut strings, this warhorse is leavened with much-needed finesse. Ibragimova launches straight into the first movement’s Molto Appassionato with sweetly focused tone – no need to milk that aching, Jewish-sounding melody when it unfolds so simply. She lingers tantalisingly on lyrical phrases, but dispatches fast passages with whiplike agility (if a little less warmth), only occasionally on the verge of getting ahead of herself. It’s that balance of impetuous zeal reeled in by cool, crisp discipline that makes this young firebrand such an exciting performer. Her cadenza is heart-on-sleeve with some very exposed playing – delicate but not lacking in energy – and the riccochet passage passes through ear-bending dynamic gradation before melting back into the main theme of the orchestral recapitulation. Throughout most of the recording Ibragimova uses vibrato sparingly but judiciously. It’s a little soppy in the tranquil Andante, but still a palate cleanser compared to sickly sweet James Ehnes on Onyx. The…

The queen of classical concept albums continues her reign with this collection of Baroque arias, all written for royal women in various states of turmoil and distress. DiDonato’s last Baroque disc, Furore, was all about Handel, but this time the focus is on less familiar composers, whose show-stopping scenas, inspired by the great divas of their era, have DiDonato’s name written all over them. Her warm, down-to-earth persona may not immediately suggest the imperiousness of royalty, but these arias catch queens at their most fragile and human – not to mention their most virtuosic – and DiDonato’s patented blend of vulnerability, visceral energy and sheer agility is precisely what they need. The opening track, Orlandini’s stormy Da torbida procella, finds her in whirlwind mode; but it is the following aria, Porta’s Madre diletta, with its plaintive melismas and gossamer pianissimi, which really sets the seal on this album’s success. As thrilling as DiDonato undoubtedly is at high speed, in this case the disc’s gentler moments are some of its most arresting: Keiser’s simple, radiant Lasciami piangere is a hushed gem, almost eclipsing Cleopatra’s much more familiar lament, Piangerò. Giacomelli’s Sposa son disprezzata – commonly but erroneously credited to Vivaldi, who……

It’s been a long time coming but at last Ligeti’s 1978 “anti-anti-opera” Le Grand Macabre arrives on DVD in a revolutionary staging by Barcelona’s innovative urban theatre troupe, La Fura Dels Baus. Nekrotzar, the Grand Macabre of the title, arrives in Breugheland (inspired by the Dutch painter Pieter Breughel’s nightmarish visions), and announces the end of the world.  In the face of a population entirely absorbed with sex, alcohol and petty politics, however, his apocalypse fails to materialise and life goes on as before.  Very much an opera for today, I would argue. This visually compelling production was a highlight of the 2010 Adelaide Festival and has been a hit wherever it has played. We begin with a giant video image of a woman watching TV, surrounded by cigarette ends and gorging on a burger.  A sudden seizure and she falls to the floor, her atrophied body metamorphosing into a giant three-dimensional set. This massive corpse is peopled by Ligeti’s grotesque cast of characters who crawl over her flanks, make love in her eye-sockets and enter her various orifices (even at one point from out of her giant vagina). Most remarkably though, the body is used as a giant projection…

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was one of the 18th century’s great musical rebels, working in a revolutionary and transitional period but destined to be overshadowed by others. History has a way of doing that to composers who don’t fit neatly into boxes. His father Johann Sebastian Bach and Mozart, geniuses both, perfectly reflect their times. Emanuel Bach may have been just as gifted, but he is neither Baroque fish nor Classical fowl and only now, it seems, are we really beginning to recognise his unique talents. Eschewing the single-emotion-per-movement model of his father’s generation, he revels in veering from one mood to another, juxtaposing introspection with temperamental outbursts and exploring divergent rhythms and quirky harmonies. Revered by Mozart, this is music that at times reaches beyond Classicism into the turbulence of Beethoven and the Romantic period. In short, CPE Bach was quite a visionary. There are four Sonatas here, the first dating from 1744 (Emanuel’s most radical period) while the latest work, a Fantasie, dates from 1787, the year before he died. The early F-Sharp Minor Sonata begins with a highly unsettling movement, playing off an unstable rhythmic motive against an endearing gallant tune. His kaleidoscopic treatment of these two…

The Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire made his initial impression on collectors with a recording of music by his compatriot Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). That Teldec disc included the Prole do Bebê Suites and the massive Rudepoema. After partnering Martha Argerich in two-piano works, Freire was absent from the catalogues for two decades, finally to reappear with a series of acclaimed recordings of Beethoven and Brahms. Now, after 40 years, he returns to the music of his homeland. The result is playing of such freshness, spontaneity and vigour that you would think no time had passed. This disc is clearly a labour of love. While Villa-Lobos gets the lion’s share of the generous program, it also contains pieces by older composers, which Freire tells us have been in his repertoire since he was a teenager (he was born in 1944). Among these are the Tango Brasileiro by the un-Hispanically named Alexandre Levy, the Valse Lent by Henrique Fernández and Camargo Guarnieri’s popular Dança Negro. While they don’t have the profile of Villa-Lobos, the other composers represented here are hardly unknown, as the sleeve note claims. Villa-Lobos selections include the bubbling Carnaval das Crianças, more familiar in its piano and orchestra version under…

Messiaen described his ten-movement Turangalîla Symphonie (1947-1949) as a song of love, a hymn to joy. Yet a bitter history informs the piece. Fierce irony shapes and drives a startling barrage of traditional and exotic instruments, creating images in the manner of medieval carnival with its mockery of prevailing social orders where comic forms took new and often sinister meanings. In this charged performance with Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Juanjo Mena captures the agitation in the work, even catching a sardonic gleam in the composer’s eye. At times, Turangalîla weaves covertly through aggressive forces manoeuvring for narrative dominance. At others it is barefaced, springing from memories of unimaginable horrors the composer endured in a German concentration camp a few years earlier. Mena’s vision of this music is sharp; familiar emotional territory for a conductor born in Vitoria, in northern Spain’s fiercely independent Basque country. With his team of Nordic musicians, he unleashes a phantasmagoric cacophony of jeering whistles, wails and screams. British pianist Steven Osborne is ferociously focused as a major and constant solo voice threading through the drama of contrasting cycles, by turns frenzied and gentle. It is relieved by plaintive, otherworldly cries of anguished love from the ondes…