As a young virtuoso, Claudio Arrau was renowned for playing long programs and tackling technically challenging works like Albeniz’s Iberia. From mid-life onwards he concentrated on the German tradition and mainstream repertoire. He reached his full maturity in the mid-1950s, when most of the recordings in the EMI box were made. This set contains the five Beethoven concertos, a selection of sonatas, and concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. Arrau was never a mere technician. In a 1970s broadcast
 of Brahms’s Second Concerto, he swayed and grimaced like a
 soul in torment. That is both the upside and downside of these recordings: he approaches each forte as if it was Mount Everest, and handles lyrical themes as if officiating at High Mass. Take
 the limpid piano melody in the second movement of Grieg’s concerto: its innate simplicity eludes him as he inflects every note with emotional significance. In his desire to make the instrument resonate he overuses the sustaining pedal, which would have been effective in a vast auditorium but turns muddy in the studio. By contrast, Alceo Galliera and the Philharmonia, who accompany most of the concertos, are a model of clarity. Arrau’s Beethoven is fascinating. Often…

In an interview for the long defunct ABC Radio National program The Score (for which I was Producer at the time), Frans Brüggen said of Mozart symphonies: “There is no such thing as ‘interpretation’.” While this might at first sound a trifle odd, I think after all this time I can see what he meant. 
He wanted the composer to speak
 for himself. Brüggen established
 the Orchestra of the Eighteenth
 Century in a very specific
 manner. He recruited Europe’s
 leading specialists in historically 
informed performance practice 
to make his band. It is in fact a
 combination of expert practitioners
 who are also are researchers and avid collaborators. He wanted it to be (and it still is) a sort of permanent workshop, where 
the members are always working together and listening to each other in the search 
for authentic sonorities. The goal in all this pursuit of sound colours is to allow the music to reveal itself. Previous cycles of Beethoven symphonies have had as their star not the composer, but the conductor. Herbert von Karajan’s cycles especially come to mind of course (as good
 as they are, they are completely different in intent and certainly in effect). The Dutch critic……

Catching up with the youngest ever winner of the Van Cliburn Competition as she heads to Australia. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

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

The new issue reveals how Beethoven poured his most intense emotions into music for his favourite instrument – the piano. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Thoughts on the premature demise of an ensemble whose grand dreams were dashed against the rocks of financial reality. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy like you’ve never seen or heard it! Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Behold the quintessential 21st-century classical musician, Valentina Lisitsa, an American-based Ukrainian whose homemade videos have garnered 50 million YouTube hits (and counting), and forged for the formerly unemployed pianist an international career that culminated in this recital in June at the Royal Albert Hall. Decca are the Johnny-Come-Latelys in all of this, but have given it the due sense of urgency, releasing the completed package online just a week after YouTube viewers had watched the whole thing unfolding live. Minor-league pianists making such a dramatic leap to major success usually have some marketable eccentricity, like a potty mouth or a tragic autobiography or a swimsuit model’s figure, but aside from a shock of blonde hair à la Claudia Schiffer, Lisitsa doesn’t. What she does have, though, is a sincerity about her playing and an ability to communicate with her audiences visually and emotionally, together with a refreshingly olde-worlde technique honed in the East European tradition of Josef Hofmann and Rachmaninov. Purists will still find plenty to hate about her playing, especially her stilted Chopin, but she has more than enough artistic credibility to take on the kind of repertoire featured here in this plebiscite concert programmed, naturally enough, by… Continue…

It is the largest box I have ever been sent to review – physically speaking – even bigger than Karajan’s 82-CD collection, though it holds only 12 discs. It also contains a lavish 192-page booklet chock full of colour photographs and articles about the pianist’s inspiration and suchlike. The product’s dimensions reflect the phenomenon of Lang Lang, a young concert pianist whose discs have sold millions of copies in China alone. Lang recently decamped to Sony, announcing his arrival with an excellent Liszt program, so DG have sensibly decided to repackage the recordings he made for them between 2000 and 2009 in a new design splashed liberally with red. No one can say that Lang Lang does not deserve the acclaim. He is a remarkable musician: technically adroit and emotionally involved in the music at all times. In many ways a throwback, he adopts the approach and occasional mannerisms of older pianists like Horowitz and Arrau. He sometimes rolls chords, and has a penchant for emphasising lyrical moments with rubato and a hushed, pearl-like tone. I call this an “18th Variation” approach, because it particularly suits that famous movement from Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Lang is also……

The eccentric pianist would have been 80 today. We celebrate with breathtaking footage of a genius at work.

A Limelight video compilation of the most epic, thrilling trills in piano music, from Beethoven to Debussy.

The Welsh bass-baritone will sing with the Melbourne Symphony in Davis’ inaugural concert. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in