Deborah Humble will give the Australian premiere of a work Mendelssohn didn't want you to hear.

A 170 year old Mendelssohn manuscript, found in a private collection, to be auctioned next month. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Hear Guy Noble as you never have before in this preview of The Guy Noble Radio Show. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Head of BBC Radio 3 and Proms programmer to leave after 15 years in post. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

With this issue we get to No 59 in Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series. That’s an awful lot of concertos, and although the series has included Saint-Säens and Rachmaninov, the vast majority of works have been obscure, neglected or (in the current case) completely unknown. The two Polish composers represented here were musicians of local reputation: highly capable but not notably individual. Aleksander Zarzycki was the older (1843-1898). His Grande Polonaise was composed in 1859, and while it has quiet sections and even a passage that sounds like French operetta, its basic aim is to imitate Chopin – for political as much as musical reasons. Chopin remains inimitable, however, and the piece comes over as a Polish imitation of Liszt. Zarzycki’s later Piano Concerto is a compendium of mid-century Romantic gestures, expertly assembled, but it lacks a true memorability that would set it apart. Władysław Żeleński (1837-1921) is slightly better known (though I must confess not to me). His Piano Concerto of 1903, a sprawling work in three movements, shows a sophisticated harmonic and orchestral palette. While possibly overwritten, it contains several individual episodes, like the first movement’s coda in Straussian waltz time… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per…

An excellent album of works by a composer whose musical trajectory was almost as varied as Stravinsky’s, but much less well-known.

Globalisation, in terms of international orchestral performing standards, seems to be the high tide which has lifted many boats! Excellent Bruckner performances are no longer the exclusive domain of the illustrious ensembles of Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, Dresden and Amsterdam. Last year I reviewed a persuasive Bruckner Five with Philippe Herreweghe and the Champs-Elysées forces – an orchestra of only 68! Donald Runnicles had critics diving for the thesaurus with his 2012 Proms Bruckner Eight (which he also conducted in Sydney a few weeks earlier) with the BBC Scottish Orchestra. His flair for maintaining lucid textures while blending different orchestral voices was singled out for particular praise, as they are here in Bruckner’s Seventh. That said, however, I take issue with the Guardian reviewer who spoke of this performance as expansive. At 60 minutes? You must be joking! Even Solti, who rarely stopped to smell the flowers, managed to take 70 minutes in his second recording. Runnicles provides an uneccentric account. The stopwatch can be an unreliable ally, especially here where, paradoxically, his tempi don’t actually sound as swift as the overall duration would indicate. They are also well integrated and the gradation of the climaxes. His ability to know how…

Mezzo chooses Judy Garland classic to add her voice to the rising chorus of protest within the arts. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Festival that reaches well beyond “the sea itself” launches in style. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Put your hands together for the BBC Proms, the grand old classical music party that defines a nation.

The BBC’s prestigious competition has crowned a new champion.

What happens to a BBC Young Musician of the Year winner nine years on? In Jennifer Pike’s case, she signs a contract with Chandos. The youngest-ever winner of the BBC award at 12, Pike has matured into a confident and expressive musician. This program brings together three of the best-known violin sonatas by French composers (more or less; César Franck was Belgian). Throughout, Pike is alert to every nuance of light and shade. In Debussy’s offering she takes a cool, modern approach: exquisitely detailed, but eschewing old-fashioned portamenti in the yearning, falling phrases of the second movement. Her Ravel is technically brilliant, the third movement’s Perpetuum mobile dashed off as though it were the easiest thing in the world. In the bluesy second movement, she does not dig deeply into the strings and sex it up in the manner of the sultry Maria Bachmann (Endeavour Classics/Allegro), but allows the movement to build naturally to a bracing conclusion. Pike is most at home in Franck’s sonata, spinning a poised legato line in the first movement and finding plenty of heart for the climaxes of the Recitativo-Fantasia. In all this she has the huge advantage of… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access…