A musical ménage-à-trois of three composers from three cities.

When any classical musician wears milliondollar jewels and designer micro-dresses to industry events, is dubbed by Fleet Street as the “Trumpet Crumpet”, and sends the tabloids into a frenzy when she breaks up with her boyfriend, you could be forgiven for assuming that she’s just a rubbish player trading on her good looks. But from the moment Alison Balsom enters on Sound the Trumpet, her fifth album since the career-defining Caprice of 2006, all cynicism and doubts are cast aside. Playing natural (valveless) trumpets, the 34-year-old multi- Classical Brit award-winner is in rare form and this follow-up to last year’s Seraph, which featured scary contemporary concerto repertoire, contains ceremonial music by Britain’s two greatest early masters in the form. With an inspired English Concert, reunited on disc with their founder Trevor Pinnock for the first time since 2002 and captured vibrantly within the album’s rich sound palette, Balsom’s trumpet at first seems strangely subdued by comparison. But it soon becomes clear that it’s the less flashy tone of the period-instrument itself – blending rather than dominating like its modern successor would – and also part of an overall strategy to keep the trumpetweaving in and out of the album fabric……

Commissioned in 1963 by San Francisco Opera as a vehicle for Maria Callas, Peggy Glanville-Hicks’s last grand opera Sappho never saw the light of day.

Tharaud plays the star former pupil of an octogenarian couple, retired music teachers both. He literally plays the soundtrack of their lives: a gentle, fluid touch in the Schubert Impromptu No 3 D899, then a buoyant, effervescent Moment Musical No 3, contrast with the more searching tone of Bach’s Chorale Prelude Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ. With the protagonists’ love for each other and for classical music so inextricably intertwined, these piano pieces are cherished memories, a visceral reminder of bereavement and a comforting balm all at once. And isn’t that what music means to us all? Read the film review here. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

This memorable live recording of Strauss’ bittersweet masterpiece was taken from live performances at the Sydney Opera House in 2010 and shows the company at maximum strength with an outstanding trio of female voices, some superbly idiomatic conducting and a fine supporting cast. Cheryl Barker is Strauss’ Die Marschallin, a married woman trying to come to terms with the march of time who proves wise enough to let her younger lover move on to girl of his own age. The role sits well for her and plays to her natural strengths for vocal characterisation and attention to text. The odd shrill note aside, this is a deeply felt performance, possibly her finest on record. Emma Pearson is a delicious Sophie (the aforementioned younger woman), her pure voice managing the exposed high notes with greater ease than many a starrier name. Catherine Carby is equally distinguished as Octavian, ardent and youthful sounding, vocally able to compliment both Barker and Pearson. The various love duets are ravishing and the famous trio a genuine highlight. The young Austrian bass Manfred Hemm makes a ripe and resonant Ochs with bags of character and genuine Viennese accent.  If his top is a little pushed, his…

The short life of the Neapolitan composer Leonardo Vinci reads like an opera plot, full of triumphs and intrigues and culminating in death via a cup of poisoned chocolate. Yet the “Lully of Italy” blazed brightly, renowned in his day for his melodic style and natural expression. Artaserse, presented in Rome in 1730 a mere three months before the composer’s sticky end (pardon the pun), was his crowning glory, typical of his gift for vivacity unburdened by weighty matters of musical structure. The libretto, by the great Pietro Metastasio, is a tale of murder, betrayal, love and honour at the Persian court and is representative of his lofty yet accessible approach. As this was the age of the castrati and women were forbidden on the Roman stage, all six of the characters, including the two female roles, were played by men. Cue this historical reenactment with five of the best countertenors around ready to do battle with Vinci’s challenging tessituras and florid vocal lines. I’m happy to report that there isn’t a duff singer to be found on this recording. The two star names, Philippe Jaroussky as King Artaserse and Max Emanuel Cencic as his sister Mandane, are class acts,…

Malcolm Martineau is not just one of his generation’s finest accompanists, but also a first-rate musical curator with an impressive knack for matching songs to singers. This 2-CD collection of Britten songs is the second in its series, notable both for the breadth of repertoire assembled and as a platform for some of Britain’s rising vocal stars. Much of Britten’s vocal music was of course written expressly for his partner and music, Peter Pears. This collection includes both the first and last piano/voice cycles Britten wrote for the tenor: the amorous Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (performed by Allan Clayton) and Who are these children?, given authentic Scots lilt by Nicky Spence. Robin Tritschler and Benjamin Hulett, take on the other Pears-inspired repertoire, with Hulett’s elegant, witty singing in The Red Cockatoo and other songs especially appealing. Maybe a greater variety among these high male voices would have been welcome – despite its common inspiration, Britten’s music for tenor is remarkably adaptable – but all four sing with admirable commitment and clarity. Also striking is baritone Benedict Nelson, in the dark and mystical Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, his slightly rough-hewn timbre a compelling jolt amid so many sweet-voiced tenors….

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… Continue…

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…