When they weren’t putting ancient kings on stage, Baroque opera composers nursed a fascination with witches, sirens and nymphs whose doings provided rich pickings for adventurous vocal and orchestral writing. Anna Prohaska’s Enchanted Forest gathers together a clutch of these characters for a program of otherworldly arias. More nymph than vengeful witch, Prohaska’s pure, slender soprano is at its best in the earlier selections: Restino imbalsamate, from Cavalli’s Calisto and Monteverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa are ethereal yet dark-edged, with gently rippling coloratura and effective use of straight tone which elsewhere can turn a little strident. At top speed the voice loses some of its lustre, although there’s a vehement accuracy to these pieces – notably Vivaldi’s Alma oppressa and Handel’s Combattuta da più venti – which is not without excitement. Of the excerpts from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, it’s the mesmerising O let me weep which is most successful, Prohaska overcoming a needlessly imperious start to deliver a lyrical, moving Plaint. Best of all, though, is Cavalli’s O piu d’ogni ricchezza, an understated tour de force whose recitatives are as vibrantly delivered as its dance rhythms and vocal effects. Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo are atmospheric partners, but make the strongest…

Parry and Stanford seem to have emerged at last from the shadow of stuffy Victorianism to take their places as respected contemporaries and, in some instances, equals of Elgar. This recording, however, is special in two particulars. Firstly, it offers rich and rare orchestral versions of sacred music more familiarly accompanied on the organ. And second – and I can’t think of a previous instance – the music is played on period instruments; that is, those in use 100 years ago. Stanford’s first setting of the Morning and Evening Service hails from 1879 and is a remarkable achievement for a 27-year-old. Conceived orchestrally, with the rules of symphonic development underpinning the whole edifice, the work was a breath of fresh air blowing through the Victorian Church of England. Three more of Stanford’s services are included here showing the level of melodic invention and sheer variety of this considerable contrapuntalist. Parry is represented by Elgar’s orchestration of Jerusalem, the Coronation Te Deum from 1911, the refulgent Blest Pair of Sirens (his ode to music for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee), and I Was Glad, the coronation anthem to end them all. The players and singers of the King’s Consort have this music…

After 500 commercial recordings, mainly together, Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields have been one of the most dependable names in the business for half a century. So with the great man turning 90 next year, there’s more than a bit of interest in how American violinist Joshua Bell goes in his very first recording as the new music director of the venerable institution founded in Sir Neville’s living room back in 1958. Short answer: really well. Nothing to scare the warhorses in his choice of Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh of course, which he and the Academy worked up during a favourably reviewed American concert tour. But succeeding a legend? Well, Bell’s never been one to shy away from potential humiliation, as he famously demonstrated by busking in a Washington DC metro (net result: $32 in 45 minutes and only seven people stopping to listen). Here, he doesn’t try to impose his personality on music most of us could whistle in our concert-hall sleep. And in this day of new editions of everything, and bold personal statements, and authentic blah-blah-blah, it’s refreshing to hear a guy on a high-profile mission simply standing with his…

Organist at St Paul’s, composer for the Chapel Royal and ultimately Master of the King’s Music, Maurice Greene’s only fault, it would seem, was that
 he wasn’t Handel. His settings
 of Spenser’s Amoretti (little 
love sonnets) trace the poet’s courtship of his future wife and may be England’s first song cycle. Each of these ditties comprise as many as five contrasting sections. Greene’s setting of Spenser is generally first rate and his response to emotional mood spot-on. The Merry Cuckow, for example, begins with a “trumpet shrill” fanfare that has more than a whiff of The Beggars’ Opera. He then falls into 3⁄4 time as the mood shifts towards love, yet still manages to set the birds name to the traditional “cuck-oo” notes. He can also rise to moments of great beauty, as in One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon The Strand with it’s drooping scotch snaps. It may not have the emotional through line of a Wintereisse, but the cycle ends effectively with three mournful reflections on absent love. Benjamin Hulett’s light, focused voice and exemplary diction perfectly conveys the subtleties of Spenser’s texts. To vary the continuo, Giangiacomo Pinardi on the orbo joins Australian harpsichordist Luke Green…

George Benjamin’s new opera is based on the strange and brutal 13th-century Provençal tale Le Coeur Mangê, in which an unnamed ruler (The Protector) asks an illuminator (The Boy) to glorify his power for perpetuity in a book. The Boy’s presence awakens the sexual independence of The Protector’s wife (Agnes), and their subsequent affair leads to the murder of The Boy. In a grisly dénouement, The Protector forces his wife to eat The Boy’s heart, after which she jumps from a window to avoid a similar fate. In order to allow the contemporary world to “bleed through”, British playwright Martin Crimp has added three “angels” who manipulate the drama as if conducting an experiment and double as subsidiary characters. It’s a brilliant conceit that produces
a satisfyingly tight piece of musical theatre matched in intellectual rigor by Benjamin’s razor-sharp score. Crimp ingeniously mixes direct speech with characters narrating their own actions, which lends the recording a special clarity, as you are frequently aware of what a character is doing or thinking. Benjamin uses his orchestra (in this instance 
the peerless Mahler Chamber Orchestra) with enormous imagination and sensitivity to evoke the musical world of the medieval illuminator. Bass viola da gamba……

For ages Haydn’s piano concertos were overshadowed by those of Mozart. It is true that Mozart’s Concertos Nos 20-27 are
 so substantial as to make Haydn’s look like trifles. The three concertos on this disc, Nos 3, 4 and 11, are in fact the only ones of Haydn actually confirmed to have been written by him. They contain all the joie de vivre we associate with this composer at his sunniest, as well as (in the G Major) a sublime slow movement that clearly influenced several composers in years 
to come, not least Beethoven. Indeed, Beethoven’s two earliest piano concertos would not exist without Haydn’s in D Major: the best known of his three.
 The first thing one notices in this recording is the tight ensemble and single-minded attack of the Violons du Roy: 
a moderately-sized string orchestra based in Quebec. (The Concertos in F and G use only string accompaniment.) These musicians play modern instruments but are historically informed in matters of vibrato and bowing. Hamelin, also Canadian, is a super virtuoso; Haydn poses no technical challenge to him whatsoever. He brings strength and colour as well as insouciance to the music. At times this team may seem a……

The legendary Brodsky Quartet – truly one of the great string quartets of our time – is currently headed to Sydney for a mid-winter feast of Shostakovich in the Sydney Opera House Utzon Room in July (performing the marathon feat of all 15 of the Russian master’s thrillingly enigmatic quartets). By way of complete contrast this
latest release from the Brits shows the group resolutely packing its buckets and spades and heading to the Mediterranean – with
a side trip to Argentina – as if intent upon their summer hols. The trip gets under way with
Hugo Wolff’s Italian Serenade, which with its racing rhythms and strong melodies is like a train trip through the Tuscan countryside. Puccini’s moving Crisantemi, on the
other hand, is an elegiac piece, written in a single sweep over the course of one night, having heard of the death of King Umberto I’s brother, the Duke of Aosta. The opera composer was so pleased with his rare venture into the mysterious realm of chamber music that he recycled it in the tragic fourth act of Manon Lescaut. Another great Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi no less, also decided to have a crack at string quartet writing, believing that the…

Dvorák’s Violin Concerto is a neglected masterpiece, but it’s never likely to have a better advocate than German violinist Julia Fischer.

Those lucky enough to see and hear the Royal Concertgebouw in Sydney at the end of this year should pay particular attention when the oboe sounds the A for the big tune-up. The man producing that note will be Alexei Ogrintchouk. It might be his only solo moment for the evening, but make no mistake: this is no ordinary oboist. The 27-year-old Russian virtuoso has been steadily building an outstanding reputation as one of the leading exponents of the instrument over the past eight years with a notable series of concerts and recordings, the latest of which is this exuberant triptych of works by Mozart at his most irresistible. The centerpiece, of course, is the concerto Mozart dedicated to his friend Friedrich Ramm, oboist with the leading orchestra of his day in Mannheim, but equally delightful is the charming and engaging quartet the composer wrote for Ramm later on. Ogrintchouk is joined by the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra in this recording on the prestige Swedish label BIS. It’s a work where Mozart is bursting with ideas – especially in the final movement where you can almost sense the composer’s excitement about his new creation. Ogrintchouk’s technique and phrasing is matchless throughout…

Valentina Lisitsa virtually invented herself through social media and is supposedly the most viewed pianist on YouTube. If this is supposed to imbue her with cachet, I’m afraid it’s lost on me. The liner notes in this set read more like a media release, giving us chapter and verse about her doubts and tribulations (as if these were somehow unique to her) and adopt an unduly reverential tone, hardly worthy of a label like Decca. Since she and her husband (with whom she initially attempted a duo pianist career before abandoning it for a solo career) sank their life savings into this project and allegedly paid for the LSO, conductor and venue themselves, one can only wish them luck. One review has described this undertaking as the latter-day equivalent of vanity publishing. Lisitsa mentions that there was no rehearsal and she hadn’t met the conductor before the recording sessions. It shows in the playing – competent, the least one would expect from the LSO, but hardly incandescent. The First and Fourth concertos have never really interested me very much. The Fourth seems to try (unsuccessfully) to incorporate jazz and the slow movement has the misfortune to bear a resemblance to……

Most Baroque composers tried their hand at setting Psalm 109, including the two masters of vocal music: Handel and Vivaldi. This release couples Handel’s only Dixit Dominus with the last of Vivaldi’s three settings, which until 2005 had been mistakenly attributed to Galuppi. Between them, as a sort of solo soprano palate cleanser, is one of Vivaldi’s spectacular motets, In furore iustissimae irae. His Dixit Dominus, by contrast, is a fairly restrained setting, gently complementing the declamatory drama and whirling strings of its Handelian counterpart. Under the direction of David Bates, La Nuova Musica – a relatively new ensemble on the early music scene – renders these works with vitality and precision. Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus is delivered with disarming simplicity, Handel’s with crisp Latin diction and bright, bracing strings. Soprano Lucy Crowe ascends the florid heights of the Vivaldi motet with silvery voice and hair-raising fearlessness and there are outstanding solos from members of the choir: Helen- Jane Howells is ravishing in the Vivaldi – her “Virgam virtutis tuae” is a pearly delight – while countertenor Christopher Lowrey sings with focused beauty. With such depth of talent in the ensemble, it’s little wonder that they’ve produced such a satisfying addition…

Revered British conductor Sir Colin Davis passed away a few months ago, yet reviewing his last recording still comes a something of a shock. Listening to this live concert performance of Weber’s ghostly masterpiece is a welcome reminder of the virtues that kept this tireless musical advocate at the top of his game for 50 years. Carl Maria von Weber was a regular visitor in the Wagner household while the young Richard was growing up, and nowhere was his influence more clearly felt on the operatic giant- to-be than in his gothic fairytale, Der Freischütz. Davis homes in on that Wagnerian dimension, and if his Weber is a relatively sedate affair next to his blistering Berlioz, it benefits from his other great strengths – instinctive sense of orchestral balance and sensitivity to singers. It’s a big-boned reading and the LSO plays its collective heart out for their Chief. Soloists are ideally memorable and the horn section is to die for. Christine Brewer makes a fine Agathe. Her ample voice is beautifully shaded when required and her prayer is most moving. New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill sings the vacillating hero Max. His voice is clear and penetrating but it’s a tight…