Eclectic French programme makes for a sublimely reflective evening. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Maestro and pianist Howard Shelley celebrates 30 years with the Tasmanian Symphony. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The most eye-catching part of the packaging for The Good Song was a small explicit content sticker in the top left hand corner. I didn’t give it much thought, writing it off as a packaging error, or a joke, a mild grab for attention. It wasn’t until I was looking through the English translations of Poulenc’s Chansons gaillardes provided with the disc that I realised this sticker might be more related to the content that first expected. Poulenc’s Chansons gaillardes derives its lyrical content from obscene 17th-century texts, resulting in lyrics such as:      To the god of love a virgin      Offered a candle      That she might obtain a lover      The god smiled at her request      And said to her: Pretty one while you wait,      You can always use the offering It is an example of obscenity realised as beautiful music. Of course these words sound far more eloquent in French. In 2013 Thomas Meglioranza devoted an entire album to Schubert’s Winterreise, a logical extension of 2007’s Schubert Songs. It is with interest that 2014’s The Good Song moves tangentially to Meglioranza’s recorded work this far. There is no Schubert to be heard here, but…

Crowd-pleasing confection delights audience’s taste but its flavours lack complexity Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt has played the music of Gabriel Fauré all her life. As she admits in her notes, he is an elusive composer. Aspects of Schumann surface in his early Nocturnes, their accompaniments containing tricky cross-rhythms, yet the Valse Caprice No 1, Op 30 has all the surface sparkle of Saint-Saëns. Fauré is too subtly complex to be regarded as a mere salon composer, although for years that is how pianists thought of him. Hewitt is aware of the contradictory sides composer, and does not restrain herself in terms of sheer power of attack when necessary. The central part of her program consists of three Nocturnes. No 6 in D Flat is the best known, a waltz with a seemingly simple (but harmonically unpredictable) opening melody supported by rippling arpeggios. No 13, from 1921, pares back all superfluous decoration to reveal the composer’s final thoughts for his favourite instrument (like Beethoven, Fauré went deaf in old age). Hewitt’s phrasing, dynamic variations and strength serve the composer well. Her recital closes with the early Ballade (later scored by the composer for piano and orchestra). Here I felt her to be too heavy-handed. The dry, light touch of Jean-Philippe Collard…

What is it about the key of D Minor? Think of the mighty Toccata and Fugue in that key we ascribe to Bach, or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. There seems to be something monumental embedded in the DNA of this key that speaks to us of life and death, of the meaning of our existence. Enterprising programmers at the City of London Festival in 2011 used D Minor to forge an interesting musical link between Bach’s solo Violin Partita No 2 and the Fauré Requiem. Obviously the Requiem is
 concerned with death, but research presented with this disc suggests 
that the outsize Ciacona with which Bach concluded the Partita is a memorial for his first wife Maria Barbara, who died suddenly at Cöthen in 1720 while Bach was away with his patron, Prince Leopold in Karlsbad. Professor Helga Thoene further suggests that the whole partita is based on a series of chorales (inaudible to the listener) and has the secret theme of death and resurrection. To prove this theory, violinist Gordan Nikolitch performs the Partita interleaved with apposite chorales sung by Tenebrae.
 In the concluding Ciacona the forces join together to create an atmospheric, if not wholly convincing musical hybrid. The…

>Following the success of his English and Spanish albums, Stephen Hough has come up with this thoughtfully planned, beautifully executed French album. Typically for Hough, the repertoire is anything but predictable. It opens with the familiar strains of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The Gallic connection lies in the transcription by the pianist Alfred Cortot, who was actually Swiss. Hough himself is a transcriber of note (or notes) and so we have his keyboard arrangements of Pizzicati from Delibes’ ballet Sylvia and Massenet’s song Crépuscule. Among the rarely played works are the charming Automne by Cécile Chaminade and Alkan’s quirky La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer. Two popular encores are included: Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso and Debussy’s Clair de lune, the latter sounding not at all hackneyed due to the surrounding context. There are multiple selections by Fauré and Poulenc, and the recital ends with a longer work, Liszt’s Réminiscences of Halévy’s opera La Juive. Hough invariably hones in on the specific quality that defines each piece. In the Ravel, it is humour, an aspect that pianists often neglect in their desire to remind us how difficult this music is to… Continue reading Get…

In his day Charles Gounod was seen as a leading composer of religious music, turning out a large number of works in his productive lifetime (20 masses and four requiems, for a start). We remember him as the composer of Faust, once the world’s most famous and popular opera. He is less well-known for a rather weak-kneed version of Roméo et Juliette, complete with happy ending. If, as an opera composer, Gounod has faded, on the evidence contained in this excellent CD his religious music warrants reappraisal, even though, with its faint perfumes of a bygone age, it might seem more elusive to ears attuned to Poulenc and Fauré. This is especially true of the Requiem, though the Messe Chorale is made of sterner stuff and is a fine work. In an 1892 letter to a colleague, Gounod writes: “It is time for the banner of liturgical Art to replace in our churches that of profane cantilena, and for musical practices to proscribe all the mush of the Romance and all the sweets of piety which have for too long sickened our stomachs”. It is possible that César Frank’s 1872 setting of Panis angelicus was just the sort of soupy church music… Continue reading…

Crank the amp and forget the neighbours – let everyone share in Mozart’s final creation.