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…

I must confess at the outset that Belshazzar’s Feast had never taken my fancy but if ever a performance were to tip the scales, it would be this one. Sir Colin and his LSO forces are in sizzling form in this truly revolutionary take on the often turgid oratorio form. They capture perfectly the coiled spring tension and the jagged, snarling, jazz-inflected rhythms and whisk us through one scene after another. Walton’s orchestration is stunning: to cite just two of many moments, the way the sounds imitate the description of Babylon’s obscene riches and the creepy instrumental accompaniment to the singer’s (Peter Coleman-Wright in fine form) description of the “writing on the wall”. In what may perhaps be an unlikely coupling, Walton’s First Symphony finds the same forces less impressive. The first movement contains some of the most explosive, searing music ever composed. You can almost smell rubber on tarmac. Walton went from the languid, effete, bright young thing of Façade to an angry young man. The benchmark will always be André Previn’s 1966 RCA recording with the same orchestra. Davis and his LSO just don’t cut it, along with everyone else. There’s nothing specifically wrong… Continue reading Get unlimited…

In this concertante piece, banjo and accordion serve as continuo instruments but with plenty of soloistic flourishes.

The works in this program were composed after Liszt abandoned the life of a touring virtuoso and settled in Weimar. There, in Goethe’s city, he composed his Faust Symphony, and a Faustian program has sometimes been attributed to his Piano Sonata. The 23-year-old Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili would agree. In her liner notes she finds parallels with Faust throughout the program. Yet while her writings suggest that all you need to master this music is a metaphysical context, she neglects to mention the physical side (probably through modesty). Buniatishvili’s technical prowess enables her to combine energy with precision at a level comparable to Argerich – indeed this is the most exciting debut performance of the Liszt Sonata since Argerich recorded it in 1960. Her intellectual rigour also allows her to plot the mercurial changes of pace, weight and speed that are built into its structure. Her allegros are imbued with Faustian recklessness. Her Liebestraum radiates a purity associated with Marguerite, while her Mephisto Waltz has power but also a light touch that can only be labelled Mephistophelian. She has two attributes necessary for a Lisztian: she never bangs the piano in double fortes, and she… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Listening to this disc, it’s clear why the three Brahms violin sonatas are so beloved by violinists: they comprise some of the most beautiful writing committed to manuscript for the instrument. So persuasive is this account by young British violinist Jack Liebeck that it’s hard to tell who is gaining the fullest pleasure – the performer or listener. Which is of course as it should be. The First Sonata was penned in 1879 when the composer was in his mid-40s. He then waited seven years before composing the final two. All three works are brimming with melodic and rhythmic riches – while the first two sonatas spill over with sun-suffused beauty, the third has noticeably more complex drama and emotion at its base. This does not mean that the first two do not carry profound passages; the First Sonata’s Adagio for instance is one of the most intense movements in Romantic musical literature. It is the favourite of many violinists, and it’s interesting to note that in fact this may have been Brahms’s least favourite. “Play it once”, he told a friend. “More it does not deserve…” These works would serve as a perfect introduction to Brahms’s chamber music. They… Continue reading Get unlimited…

It is easily forgotten that silent movies were never silent. In classier cinemas one usually found an orchestra of indeterminate size scrabbling furiously in pursuit of the villain, or sympathetically setting the mood for a love scene. Even in smaller establishments there would be at least a pianist banging away. For the most significant films, a full score would be commissioned, and a few of these rarities were so good that they have survived to the present day. Gottfried Huppertz’s score for Metropolis, written in 1927 to accompany the dazzling film by Fritz Lang, is one such example. The useful notes that accompany the CD give us a story of the scrupulous way in which Huppertz approached his job, including visits to the set during filming. Only with the discovery of the missing 20 minutes of footage in 2008 has the fully restored film and its score been rehabilitated.  Interest in the film was rekindled in 1983 when Giorgio Moroder released a partial restoration with a rock score he himself had composed with a little help from his friends, including Freddie Mercury of Queen. Whatever the merits and curiosities of that version, the original 1927 score… Continue reading Get unlimited…