Bach’s 30 variations on an original theme, BWV 988, constitute a challenging monument of the keyboard literature. This work bookended the recording career of Glenn Gould. The eccentric Canadian taped a youthful, dazzling performance in 1955, and a more deeply contemplative one in 1981, just prior to his untimely death. The variety of contemporary styles Bach drew on allows performers differing but equally legitimate approaches. Into this mix, we must add the piano-versus-harpsichord question (personally, I love Bach on the piano). This disc by American pianist Nicholas Angelich is a winner. As there is no biography with it, let me fill in the gaps: born in 1970, Angelich studied in Paris with Loriod, Béroff and Ciccolini, and has previously recorded Brahms for this label. He uses every expressive device at his disposal. He decorates the theme heavily, and also the French variations in compound time, yet he varies his touch to make an Italian epidosde like the rapid No 5 less relentless. He is subtle in the canonic variations, allowing the slower ones to sing like Chopin. In this way his performance recalls the wonderful Telarc recording by Simone Dinnerstein.  Some pianists (like Gould in 1981) play the main theme… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Steve Reich’s highly anticipated September 11 lament comes ten years after the terrorist attacks and the release itself was not without controversy (note the revised album artwork). His account is everything we have come to expect from America’s greatest minimalist, and therein lies the problem. WTC 9/11 serves as a bookend to the Kronos Quartet’s 1988 collaboration with the composer, Different Trains: a profound work in which the strings echo the sampled speech of Holocaust survivors. Reich has rehashed the technique, this time with the voices of air traffic controllers and firemen who were among the first to grasp the magnitude of the American tragedy. What fails to move me is the mimicry, so poignant in Different Trains but cumbersome and almost tasteless here. Redeeming melodic interest comes in a reflective section of Hebrew Psalms, sung by Jews who prayed for the dead on the scene. Just shy of 16 minutes long, WTC 9/11 is as immediately terse and engaging as, say, Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. Reich’s structure and economy of means are masterful, but with the entire disc running to only 36 minutes I feel short-changed, despite the inclusion… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from…

The Latitude 37 trio has added its refined voice to Australia’s small but vibrant early music community, with a debut release that adheres to much the same winning formula as the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s Baroque Tapas, also featuring Laura Vaughan. One senses the ensemble’s inventiveness as a whole as well as the personalities of the players and their guests. Their rapport is most rewarding in Salaverde’s Canzon a due, where Julia Fredersdorff’s sweet-toned Baroque violin interlaces with the drier gamba passages, sensitively underscored by Donald Nicolson on chamber organ. The overall selection is perhaps more solemn than that of Tapas, as in the opening regal procession of Diego Ortiz’s Passamezzo antico and two pieces by Caccini and Palestrina, with Siobhán Stagg’s light soprano beaming through clouds. Some tracks replace gamba with the lirone, an Italian continuo instrument with a unique, gossamer sheen to its plaintive chords.  There’s plenty to liven up proceedings: Guy du Blêt’s varied percussion is essential to the success of the album in exuberant spagnoletta dance rhythms and a rustic Kapsberger passacaglia. Improvised, virtuosic flourishes over ground bass are executed by all players with flair. A small world, but one full of discovery. Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

A hugely satisfying release from a musician with talent and technique to burn.

This fascinating opera has had an uneven reputation from day one. Although Boito is better known as the brilliant librettist to Verdi’s last two masterpieces, Falstaff and Otello, he was also a composer of some standing, and Mefistofele was his magnum opus. It is the Faust legend, but done more flamboyantly and with a different dramatic emphasis than Gounod’s. Boito’s opera is a series of vignettes, with gaps between some scenes that do not always add up to a dramatic whole. In this opera, the character of Margherita is almost a sideshow. The main drama takes place between Mefistofele, Faust and God – as represented by a heavenly host, the chorus. By the final act and epilogue Margherita is long gone, leaving the stage to the three protagonists. It all works up to a wonderfully bombastic and exciting finale. Having seen a fine production of this opera in Vienna, I can attest to the work’s power on stage. Flawed it might be, but it is much more fun than Gounod’s Faust, and more dramatic. This live recording comes from the opera house in Palermo and is an effective enough performance from a good provincial opera house…. Continue reading Get unlimited…

There are only a handful of vocal ensembles in Australia equipped to give persuasive and informed performances of Renaissance liturgical music. This Sydney-based early music group certainly has the right choral credentials, having formed in 2009 after members took part in the Tallis Scholars Summer School program. The Parsons Affayre model themselves after that revered choir in English Catholic Renaissance repertoire; this latest disc follows a release devoted to the music of their namesake, Tudor composer Robert Parsons. The new album takes its title from the florid Stabat mater of William Cornysh (d 1523). It is one of the most impressive performances here: pure, soaring soprano lines, expertly balanced in counterpoint with the basses, maintain momentum through time changes. Inner voices, however, are less assured. Byrd’s famous motet Ave verum corpus is well controlled and casts an appropriately solemn mood, but might have benefited from more contrast and expansive shaping. His Infelix ego is sweet and airy in sustained soprano notes. The basses are the stars of the darker-hued Tallis Lamentations of Jeremiah I. This reading opens rigidly but weaving polyphonic textures begin to bloom beautifully as the choir warms to the work. The plaintive, repeated cries of  “Jerusalem” towards…

Anyone who has heard the four-manual organ designed for Melbourne’s Scots Church by Austria’s Rieger firm will be aware of its heart-stopping magnificence.

Pietari Inkinen maintains the high standards he has achieved with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and their distinguished Sibelius cycle. However, the competition is much stronger here (Karajan, Järvi, etc) and I don’t think I’m able to give quite as unqualified an endorsement to the performance as the previous release (Symphonies 4 and 5). Nonetheless, the results are impressive. At just over 44 minutes, tempi are splendidly central (it’s hard to believe the great Sibelius conductor Kajanus got through it in 39’!) but what impresses me most about the reading is the articulation of the strings and both the alert playing of the woodwinds and the way the engineers have captured it. The work was said to have been partly inspired while Sibelius was visiting Italy and there’s certainly plenty of Mediterranean warmth once the first movement gets going, and in the trio of the quicksilver scherzo. Perhaps it helps to be Finnish but Inkinen seems to judge this music unerringly and maintains the odd arctic chill amid the pastoral charm. He doesn’t over-egg the pudding either in the final brass peroration, which can sound laboured if too drawn out, but maintains a convincing intensity. Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

His Deutsche Grammophon contract may be relatively recent, but Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo has been around for quite some time. On this new disc, he’s palpably at ease, singing arias from the Italian Mozart roles which have been his bread and butter for a couple of decades. The program holds few surprises – Mozart basses and baritones are rather less spoilt for choice than their soprano counterparts – but D’Arcangelo’s vocal swagger is enough to keep these familiar favourites fresh. He’s at his best in the faster-paced comic arias: the Italianate bite of his timbre, coupled with a native speaker’s suave command of the text, allows him to tread nimbly and engagingly through Figaro’s Aprite un po’ quegli occhi, Leporello’s catalogue aria and Count Almaviva’s Vedro mentr’io sospiro. In Don Giovanni’s serenade, he’s muscular if not massively seductive, but Finch’han del vino is energetically delivered, as is Se vuol ballare. Differentiation between characters could be stronger, but each aria in itself is vivid enough, and one imagines that a stage could easily elicit the charisma occasionally lacking on disc. No doubt for variety’s sake, D’Arcangelo also includes a few lesser-known concert arias. These free-standing showpieces, with… Continue reading Get unlimited…

As a child prodigy Mendelssohn composed this Piano Concerto when aged just 13 for his sister Anna; the Double Concerto for violin and piano followed just a year later. But these works go far beyond early-teen precocity. They brim with delicious insight and innovation, and easily could have come from the composer’s assured maturity. The Piano Concerto in particular is stamped with a wonderful dynamism which demonstrates his contagious and exhilarating confidence in his own prowess. The middle-movement Adagio gives pause for reflection, but the jaunty Finale reaffirms the joy of being so gifted, and just 13.  The Double Concerto seems more consciously mature. But the lessening of an impetuous joie de vivre in the earlier work is more than compensated for by the sheer beauty of its writing and in the more reflective nature of the dialogue between the two solo instruments. The Freiburger Barockorchester led by violinist Gottfried von der Goltz gives a nicely judged accompaniment – which is the right term, as this Double Concerto is really a Sonata for two instruments with orchestral support. These period-instrument performances give full expression to Mendelssohn’s gifts. Particularly pleasing is the beautiful tone of Kristian Bezuidenhout’s… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

First of all I need to put my cards on the table – I am a Philip Glass fan. I’m not sure why that feels like such a confession but it probably needs stating, like declaring hidden goods at customs. This is a collection of piano pieces by the “mature” Glass, not the early radical who alternately awed and angered the music community with his heavily amplified and surreal take on Western music’s basics but the genteel classicist who has embraced symphonies and concertos with increasing ardour. For many years Glass retained strict control over his catalogue, ensuring a steady stream of performance engagements, however since his extraordinary commercial breakthrough the gates have slowly opened to others revealing a more nuanced character than one might assume. This is a beautiful and sensitive reading of the repertoire by Sally Whitwell, one of Sydney’s busiest and most broadminded pianists. Whitwell’s take on works like Mad Rush and Wichita Vortex Sutra (originally a duet with Allen Ginsberg) reveals a passion often absent in Glass’s own interpretations; likewise she brings refreshing chiaroscuro to the famous Opening from Glassworks. In her hands the latent echoes of earlier composers become clear: Glass,… Continue reading Get unlimited…

What is jazz? There is no concise answer, but this handsomely packaged boxed set offers a wealth of delightful and persuasive answers. It does so over the course of six CDs of wonderful music, along with informative and persuasive essays about jazz history, the artists represented here, and the specific performances included – as well as plenty of classic photographs. Unlike the previous Smithsonian anthology, assembled by US jazz critic Martin Williams back in the vinyl era, this one is the product of a team effort, with over 100 jazz experts (from the USA and other countries) consulted during a painstaking debate over which artists should be included, and which recordings should be chosen as representative of their best and/or most influential contributions to the jazz canon. The set runs (for the most part) in chronological order, enabling us to marvel at the sheer zest, power and inventiveness of what must have sounded incredibly new and exotic when the average listener first heard Louis Armstrong in his prime, or Jelly Roll Morton, or Sidney Bechet, or Bix Beiderbecke. The set takes us through the swing era, with the big bands of Basie, Ellington, Shaw and Goodman, and the combos led… Continue reading…