Founder Fabian Russell looks back at 20 years of Australia's mentor-led training program.

Markus Stenz reunites with the MSO in a colourful and charismatic end to the season.

John Casken’s orchestral music is monumental in breadth and vision, and makes for enjoyable listening. 

Two spectacular instrumental showcases that, despite their differences, find common ground.

In an industry said to be in more or less dire straits by various sources, I’m amazed that a small boutique label like Oehms can afford to issue two recordings of Mahler’s Resurrection symphony with different conductors and orchestras. Simone Young’s Hamburg recording followed
 hot on the heels of Markus Stenz’s Cologne effort. Now, here is another Markus Stenz live performance with the Melbourne Symphony, of which he was chief conductor. Stenz proved his credentials as a Mahler conductor during his slow-release cycle a few years ago. This performance dates from December 2004. I don’t know why it’s taken almost a decade to reach us. That said, I enjoyed this traversal. It’s quite different from Simone Young’s: more volatile, with a much greater range of tempos and moods. Occasionally, I felt he skated over details in the first movement and the phrasing risked sounding perfunctory. (Perhaps ironically, this version is overall about four minutes longer than Young’s.) The Minuet movement is commendably unsentimental
 but the Scherzo is taken too 
fast for it to register its sardonic and demonic quality. Both Stenz’s soloists, mezzo-soprano Bernadette Cullen and soprano Elizabeth Whitehouse, seem more comfortable than their Hamburg counterparts. Also, in the Urlicht…