Musica Viva and Limelight editor Francis Merson host an afternoon of intimate chamber music and conversation.

Formed in 1975, the ensemble presents music that is “dark and depressing, glorious and wonderful”. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Sydney Camerata Quartet are fortunate to be one of Musica Viva’s “Rising Stars” ensembles this year. Along with our friends in the Enigma Quartet and Streeton Trio, we’re receiving masterclasses with both local and international artists and presenting concerts with the assistance of Musica Viva. It’s an exciting opportunity that we’re thrilled to be a part of and we hope you’ll join us for some of our performances throughout the year as we showcase what we’ve been working on. A number of our events will take place in unusual spaces, such as the pop-up concert the Enigma Quartet performed last week as part of the Vivid Festival at an intimate heritage venue in The Rocks. This past week we made our Rising Stars debut at two masterclasses, one with Aiko Goto of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and another with Julian Smiles of the Goldner Quartet. Both players brought a wealth of experience to contribute to our rehearsals. We worked on Prokofiev’s String Quartet No 1 and Haydn’s Op 33/3 The Bird. As any chamber musician would know, one can work in such incredible detail and we spent time particularly on the Haydn, working bar by bar to focus on intonation and achieve a……

Belgium ensemble Trio Dali are very serious about having fun with music. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Stanford-based ensemble tours Australia with oboist Diana Doherty. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Comprising both smaller-scale works as well as three sonatas, this generous collection shows the versatility and mastery of Paul Lewis in Schubert’s piano music. While the Impromptus D899 are among Schubert’s best-known instrumental works, Lewis allows us to hear them as if for the first time. Each is carefully shaped and interesting details are pointed out along the way, without ever losing sense of the melodic and dramatic arc of the whole. Full of references to Schubert’s song style, the late, lesser-known Klavierstücke D946 are ultimately valedictory in tone and Lewis gives them a marvelous rendition. Less easy for some to enjoy are the sonatas, with their emphasis on thematic development at the expense of structure. Lewis’s strong characterisation of successive ideas together with an uncanny sense of musical perspective allows him to guide the listener convincingly through Schubert’s musical arguments. In particular we can delight in the variety of moods Lewis creates in the scherzo of the D-Major Sonata D850 and the laconic humour he brings to its finale. By contrast, the opening of the G-Major Sonata D894 is invested with an admirable quiet devotion. The unfinished sonata Reliquie D840 seems a strange work… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Canadian ensemble Tafelmusik play the music of the spheres, with a little help from Galileo. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The greatest music — say, a late Beethoven piano sonata — exists in its own realm. It does not automatically conjure up images of the period in which it was written. Chopin’s waltzes do, and that is why they are sometimes thought of as glorified salon music. It takes a pianist with the sensibility of Stephen Hough to reveal the art behind their mixture of effervescence and sentimentality. Chopin himself regarded his waltzes as comparative trifles; he only published half of them and often gave the manuscripts to young ladies as gifts. Hough’s facility with lighter music is well documented in his mixed recitals. He has an instinctive knowledge of when to relax and when to press forward, which is used to charming effect in this beautifully recorded collection. In both the Minute and the C-sharp minor waltzes (from the Op 64 set) Hough subtly caresses the melodic lines, and breezes through the scale passages with an evenness of touch, never making too great a point of virtuosity. Mirroring the composer’s achievement, this is the art that conceals art. The delicacy of Hough’s approach also benefits the unpublished waltzes, many of which are less complex and less polished than the… Continue reading…

The British pianist talks politics, blogs, bowler hats and trying his hand at composition. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Chopin's waltzes may be mere soufflés, but they are very tasty ones, says the British pianist.

The British pianist's two-year Schubert world tour is giving him new insights into the composer.

The works in this program were composed after Liszt abandoned the life of a touring virtuoso and settled in Weimar. There, in Goethe’s city, he composed his Faust Symphony, and a Faustian program has sometimes been attributed to his Piano Sonata. The 23-year-old Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili would agree. In her liner notes she finds parallels with Faust throughout the program. Yet while her writings suggest that all you need to master this music is a metaphysical context, she neglects to mention the physical side (probably through modesty). Buniatishvili’s technical prowess enables her to combine energy with precision at a level comparable to Argerich – indeed this is the most exciting debut performance of the Liszt Sonata since Argerich recorded it in 1960. Her intellectual rigour also allows her to plot the mercurial changes of pace, weight and speed that are built into its structure. Her allegros are imbued with Faustian recklessness. Her Liebestraum radiates a purity associated with Marguerite, while her Mephisto Waltz has power but also a light touch that can only be labelled Mephistophelian. She has two attributes necessary for a Lisztian: she never bangs the piano in double fortes, and she… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…