They may be concert hits now, but in their day Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite changed the face of dance. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

★★★★☆ Insightful concept packed with percussive thrills and spills. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery or might it just lead to a lawsuit? Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A highly detailed and sympathetically recorded account with astonishingly brilliant orchestral playing.

Stravinsky's closest advisor, collaborator and companion has passed away at his home in Florida, aged 92.

“Stravinsky belongs to that group of composers whom we admire first and foremost for their intellect…  but it would be a mistake to believe that this intellectual admiration excludes emotion.” So writes pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet in the note to his terrific new recording featuring Stravinsky’s works for piano and orchestra and which appeals to the heart as much as the head. Bavouzet won awards last year for his recording of the Prokofiev Piano Concertos. Here, joined by a very much on-form São Paulo Symphony Orchestra under the suave, alert direction of Yan Pascal Tortelier, he again demonstrates his affinity for genuine orchestral collaboration while submitting to that lapidary yet rhythmically vital realisation of line and texture so important in Stravinsky’s music. The Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments has never sounded more like a multi-coloured riot of tessellation across which drift occasional shadows. The following Capriccio is also pure delight, Bavouzet’s playing shot through with a sparkling lyricism that he even manages to inject into the 12-tone Movements. And if the piano in Pétrouchka is merely a member of the orchestra, Bavouzet nevertheless relishes his role in contributing to one of the tightest yet most theatrically lavish performances of this…

The Rite of Spring can sound even more raw-boned and serrated on piano than in Stravinsky’s orchestral concept. The timpani of fingers against keyboard; this is no place for soft-pedalled or inappropriately decorative playing. In the hands – four of them at one piano – of Susanne Huber and André Thomet the score becomes a terrifying edifice, breathing with a directness that chills the soul. We’re used to hearing the introductory bassoon solo emerge as though from a faraway horizon, Stravinsky’s line stooping against metric regularity as it inches centre stage. But now we’re thrown bodily inside the unfolding argument, snow-blinded by the busyness of Stravinsky’s counterpoint. Some recordings of this four-hand redux can sound overly polite and too ‘pianoey’. But Huber and Thomet make their intentions clear with “Danses des adolescents”, as those accented string chords are pummelled with pile-driver might.And ditto the crunchy reading of Debussy’s two-piano En Blanc et Noir (1915), the black and white of the piano keys symbolising the black and white morality, as Debussy saw it, of one nation imposing itself on others during the Great War. German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Monologe (1964) slices through history as source material co-opted from Bach, Mozart……

A precise, direct and fully realised 2015 season opener from the Nation’s capital. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Get in the mood for amore with this list of 10 of the most romantic couples in classical music.

Chemistry between Gergiev and LSO on display in Prokofiev masterpiece. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Last year’s celebration of Australia’s musical elite diaspora, the Australian World Orchestra, (plus a few resident players) featured Zubin Mehta on the podium. I’ve always regarded Mehta as a superb “technician” but, apart from a wunderkind debut Bruckner Ninth, while still in his twenties with the Vienna Philharmonic, I’ve never found his interpretations particularly engaging. However, my reactions to this two CD set of the occasion has somewhat changed my thinking. Their performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, in its centenary year, is very fine- without challenging Doráti’s, Bernstein’s first New York version or Igor Markevich’s old Philharmonia (stereo) version where the orchestral shriek at the opening of the second section is truly blood curdling. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the treacherous opening bassoon passage so beautifully shaped. The woodwind is also beautifully captured throughout. Mehta’s tempi are steady rather than headlong. The performance of  Mahler’s First Symphony was a treat. Mehta included the discarded Blumine (“Flowers’) movement ( as he did in his Israel Philharmonic recording in the late eighties) although Mahler was probably right to remove it, as it sounds genuinely, as distinct from faux, naïve. The string playing was of a caliber we seldom hear…

Anthony Marwood and George Enescu co-star in an exquisitely conceived program.