Led by Perth-based composer and arranger Johannes Luebbers, this dectet successfully straddles the jazz-classical divide. The album touches other forms such as rock and pop: Aaron Malone provides a soulful vocal cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, accompanied by nimble guitarist Simon Jeans. The title track is layer upon layer of richly bladed sectional coatings underneath exciting solos by altoist Ben Collins and pianist Chris Foster, bookended by a jaunty dialogue between piano, drums and bass. Just Ripe is a lavish theme given a post-modern bent featuring trumpeter Callum G’Froerer. Everything for Brod increases in lyrical intensity with an oboe intro from Steph Nicholls but soon swells in orchestral energy before retreating to woodwind and piano sobriety – only to explode once again, exemplifying the textural and dramatic qualities of Luebbers’ pen. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Wow. Just when you thought you knew all about Cuban music, along comes this steaming hot release to prove you wrong. If the incredibly spirited music of the Creole Choir is distinctly different from the Cuban dance music of the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon, it’s for a good reason. Its ten members are descended from Haitians who were brought to Cuba as slaves in the 18th century. Those slaves’ ancestry accounts for the heavy African sound in both their drumming – the only instrumental accompaniment – and striking vocal melodies. If you also think you hear French and Spanish inflections in the vocals, it’s because the choir sing in Creole, a pot pourri of European, Caribbean and African tongues. These are extraordinarily fiery performances – enough to light up the sky on the darkest of days. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Fans of Fado might like to investigate Joana Amendoeira’s new disc Setimo Fado. As indicated, this is her seventh disc, but it’s only her second album to be released here. Fado’s nostalgic longings for love, life and distant shores are understood universally – across language and culture. In 17 short songs, with their traditional accompaniment of Portuguese guitar, bass and acoustic guitar (and touches of piano, accordion and cello), Joana Amendoeira sings directly from her heart. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

This is an outstanding new Australian release, a beautiful and moving disc. Liminal is somewhat reminiscent of the “holy minimalism” of Górecki and Tavener, recorded with clean resonance. Beneath the liquid surface, however, lies an undercurrent of just-contained fire. Nick Tsiavos is a very active Melbourne double bassist and composer; he’s one of those quiet achievers whose work you may have heard without knowing it. His music is a fusion of ancient Byzantine chant, European jazz, minimalism and the free-form exuberance of ’70s rock. The eight pieces here draw together two strands of his work. Earlier discs like Transference, recorded late at night in a giant incinerator, comprise rich yet understated solo improvisations. By contrast, his quintet Jouissance reinterprets medieval and renaissance music within a contemporary frame. The opening track here, Axion estin, sets the tone – resonant bells and long-stretched bass notes support Deborah Kayser’s ethereal voice. The Shaman Dances are… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Despite the received wisdom that his music is dry and academic, much of the material is energetic and convivial – even witty. The viola was his instrument and he composed seven sonatas for it, in addition to these pieces. The two neo-classical works, Konzertmusik Op 48 and Kammermusik No 5, are 20th-century takes on Handel’s Concerti Grossi and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti respectively and feature masterful orchestration – especially in the superlative woodwind writing and bustling outer movements – while affording ample scope for the viola’s exquisitely soulful qualities. His only fully fledged concerto for the viola was Der Schwanendreher (“The Swan Turner”). This is based on old German folksongs, played by an iterant fiddler (the viola soloist), in an attempt to evoke the spirit of a more innocent age; understandable, considering Germany’s increasingly bleak political climate (Hindemith was resolutely anti-Nazi). This is the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

I was somewhat baffled by this CD. It’s clearly a promotional tool for Stuart & Sons Pianos on the new Leatham Music label, produced by Gregory Lewis and engineered by Trevor Doddridge in All Saints Anglican Church, Albury. Fair enough, but the title, Beauties and Beasts, becomes rather confusing. The inclusion of the four-handed arrangement of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite is fine, especially since one movement is called Beauty and the Beast. The next piece, Part 1 of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, is understandable, although the abrupt, unresolved ending makes it more like a “bleeding chunk”. I was also reminded of Stravinsky’s remark that Karajan’s first interpretation of his Rite of Spring was a “pet savage, not a real one!” The second two works on the CD hardly reinforce the theme: Schubert’s Waltzes, Op 18A, radiate Biedemeier charm and Gemütlichkeit but are hardly… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

This distinguished performance of a much maligned work, more a symphonic cantata than a real symphony, will no doubt form another step in its rehabilitation, although it’s doubtful that Lobgesang “Hymn of Praise” will ever occupy the same exalted rank as the Scottish or Italian Symphonies. It was composed in 1840 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of printing with moveable type – it’s always intrigued me that the powers that be apparently saw fit to celebrate in religious terms the invention of what, in its time, must have caused as great an explosion of knowledge and information as the Internet and Google have done in ours. With at least one Anglican clergyman among my own ancestors, I’ve no wish to denigrate the Protestant religion, which was in itself a major liberating force in Western Europe, but with Mendelssohn everything often ends up sounding Lutheran. That said, this is an absolute cracker, as a performance, recording and interpretation. Märkl invests the opening movement with admirable vigour, as if determined to sweep away portentousness; the Adagio is also purged of etiolated Victorian piety (just!) The unusual combination of singers (two sopranos and a… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per…

Reading Daugherty’s liner notes to this collection of works for orchestra, it’s clear that what inspires his music is unpredictable and mostly extramusical. Route 66 is a big, boisterous Cadillac of a piece, intended to convey the experience of driving from Illinois to California. In only seven busy, energetic minutes, Daugherty’s writing bombards your ears with the full dynamic and textural ranges of the very capable Bournemouth Symphony. Sunset Strip follows a similar thematic vein (as the title suggests), although it is, ironically, a longer journey (composed in three movements) allowing for moments of ear-relieving sparsity. Slightly less in-your-face than the asphalt-alluding works is Ghost Ranch, inspired by the life and paintings of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Each contrasting movement attempts to paint a different image, each of which is described in the liner notes. I couldn’t glean much of a relationship between sound… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

For many composers the 20th century was an era of paranoia. For some, particularly in Europe, the paranoia was about survival. Mostly, however, the paranoia was aesthetic; after the fall of tonality all doors were open. Which notes to use? How many notes to use? Whose notes to use? When to use them? Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski developed his own very individual response to this problem with a technique he called “limited aleatorism”. Instrumentalists would play their own carefully notated parts in their own time and at their own pace, cued by a conductor, creating a spaciousness and depth that is refreshed by every performance. You can hear this in the two masterful later works on this disc, both from the 1980s. Chain 3 and the Symphony No 3 are inventive and free, their constantly shifting branches teeming with life. The much earlier Concerto For Orchestra… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The first disc is the closest to the classic art song in style, allowing Anne Sofie von Otter to give full expression to these songs. Five are settings by Mehldau of poems by the early American poet Sara Teasdale, with one poem each from e.e. cummings and Philip Larkin. Von Otter invests these with plenty of rubato and emotion; this is her disc. The second disc shows more freedom in a light pop-jazz way. Although von Otter confesses she dares not try improvisation, she is able to cope easily with Mehldau’s mildly swinging approach to standards by composers including Richard Rodgers, Joni Mitchell, Lennon-McCartney, Bernstein and a group of French masters of the genre, including Michel Legrand and Jacques Brel. She does this by mainly observing rhythm and melody and lightening up the intense interpretative expression we heard earlier. Lightness is the key. It is a pleasant… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Lovers of musicals usually fall into either the Broadway camp or the Lloyd Webber camp. The skirmishes between the two are frequent, bloody and pointless. It’s simply a case of incompatible sensibilities: Webber writes modern light opera (i.e. all dialogue is sung) with an operatic, often overblown sense of drama and pathos; Broadway shows traditionally interleave spoken dialogue with musical numbers, highlight the pizzazz of the performer and wield a sense of irony absent in Webber’s work. But even fans of Webber may be a touch disappointed by this double CD, in which many beloved songs are rendered as instrumentals. Starlight Express, The First Man You Remember and I Don’t Know How to Love Him are performed by the likes of cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and André Rieu.These instrumentals sound dangerously like elevator music. Fortunately, for the tracks that are sung, Decca has deployed some of the finest voices you could desire. Sarah Brightman tackles Whistle Down the Wind; Anna Netrebko sings the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The energy emanating from this exciting disc and accompanying DVD of Indian traditional music is almost palpable. In concert, the Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan dance, contort and breathe fire, as well as singing traditional folk songs from the deserts and light classical songs from North India. Led by tabla player Rahis Bharti, the group is formed around a pulsating percussion base, with morsing (jew’s harp), dholak (drum), kartal (wooden clappers) and several tablas. Over this weaves the bowed, cello-like sarangi and the harmonium, introduced to India by French missionaries in the mid 19th-century. With several vocalists, their music is part of the lineage which includes the Sufi qawwali devotional singers such as the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The wedding song Banno excites with its pounding drumbeat; the tongue-in-cheek Rajasthani Reggae is an invitation to love sung over a loping tabla rhythm. Vocalist Sanjay Khan hauntingly sings of the Wind of Love over bowed sarangi strings before the short frenzied dancing… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in