Schoenberg and Abbott shine in works reconfigured for Piano Trio.

Steve Davislim's Tito will also be among the highlights to catch the ears of Aussie audiences.

Rock solid a cappella mastery in a thoughtful programme by Sam Allchurch.

The conductor explains the allure of the German Romantics ahead of his performance with Sydney Chamber Choir.

Skelton's wild hunt puts the summer wind up another fine Gurre-Lieder.

Ensemble Bios is an Italian group led by conductor Andrea Vitello, dedicated to performing works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Their first outing for Italy’s Continuo label features “actress of the voice” Anna Clementi in Schoenberg’s 1912 song cycle Pierrot Lunaire.  Broken into three lots of seven (reflecting the composer’s obsession with numerology), it famously utilises Sprechstimme, a semi-spoken technique associated at the time with melodrama and to some extent Lieder and cabaret. Clementi’s delivery is deft, mocking and expressionistic, soaring and plunging while detailing Pierrot’s macabre exploits as the instrumentalists sensitively weave around her vocalisations. A century on, it still sounds thrillingly modern.  It’s paired here with a recent work by Florentine composer Andrea Portera (b. 1973), whose symphonic, theatrical and chamber works (over 120) have met with critical acclaim and two silver medals from the President of the Italian Republic. Red Music consists of three quite beautiful pieces for chamber ensemble, all just over four-minutes long, and dedicated to Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rostropovich respectively. Each work subtly evokes the subject of its dedication – the frenetic dynamism of Prokofiev’s piano works, Shostakovich’s deeply unsettling strings, or the sound of Rostropovich’s rich, expansive cello. It makes for an…

Faced with what seemed a creative dead end, Arnold Schoenberg discovered a radical new way to compose. Its impact has inspired and infuriated in equal measure.

Despite a glacial start, Pintscher and Serkin pull out all stops.

This program was the opening concert of the 2013 Lucerne Festival and Abbado would die a few months later. It is an intensely moving memorial. For conducting students this is a lesson in economy of means as his frail state dictated that he achieve so much with so little effort. His beloved “hand-picked” orchestra respond to his slightest gesture; what an extraordinary ensemble they are – a hyper-attentive giant chamber group all listening to one another, shaping phrases with love and care.  The Schoenberg is a treat with two extracts from Gurrelieder; the Orchestral Interlude with its luscious ultra-Tristanesque harmonies and soaring Tove melody, and the Song of the Wood Dove sung by the lovely Mihoko Fujimura who inhabits the role.   The main work is the Eroica Symphony and may divide opinion; some may consider the tempi too broad in the grand old manner but I was captivated. This was a loving performance crafted from years of experience and deep wisdom with phrases floating weightlessly and moments of breathtaking stasis and innigkeit. There is some exquisitely beautiful playing here such as that by oboist Lucas Macias Navarro. It is rare to hear such finely graduated dynamics and perfectly balanced…

Now here’s a CD that can’t be judged by its cover. No, it’s not a Janine Jansen solo album, although that’s the obvious, and presumably deliberate, first impression, but in fact a chamber music recording involving the Dutch violinist and five colleagues from her festival in Utrecht. And if anyone deserves to be featured in a hero-shot on the cover, it should in fact be audio engineer Julian Schwenkner who’s captured this interesting coupling of Schoenberg and Schubert in magnificent, warm, truly-contoured sound. As for the performances, every moment of Transfigured Night is drama-charged and driven home with commitment, making it easy to understand how the Second Viennese School arose not out of some abstract theory, but from late-Romantic hyperemotionalism. Jansen’s sweettoned fiddle balanced against the rich dual-cello sound makes Schoenberg’s haunting picture of Maeterlinck’s lovers in a moonlit forest into a compelling listen. The Schubert’s pretty good too, but as sometimes happens when friends get together, it perhaps misses some of the profundity, especially in the glorious Trio of the Scherzo, which suggests players anxiously glancing at one another, rather than the played-inblood, rip-your-heart-out shredfest that permanent ensembles like the Guarneris bring to it on disc. State of the…

When they burst onto the chamber music scene in the 1970s, the Emerson String Quartet were iconoclasts. New York-based, they swapped first and second violin roles, and along with the Brodskys and Kronos they swept away the grand but stuffy tradition embodied by the Amadeus and the Guarneris. And now, nine Grammys later, they’re continuing to push the boundaries with an intriguing CD featuring the bookends of arguably the most momentous decade ever in classical music. Joined by long-time collaborators, American violist Paul Neubauer and British cellist Colin Carr, the Emerson’s readings of the great sextets by Tchaikovsky and Schoenberg are like a lesson in musical history. Tchaikovsky, at the beginning of the 1890s, used his Souvenir de Florence (the slow movement was written in the city) to continue the classical traditions that he inherited from his models Mozart and Mendelssohn. Then, at the end of that decade – indeed century – the young Schoenberg in his Transfigured Night sent music into the future, his twisted harmonies depicting haunted forests and psycho-babbling sensualists. And in this wonderfully-played CD, which is being hailed as a farewell for cellist David Finckel who’s leaving after 34 years, the Emersons and friends do everything…

Many classical audiences cringe at the thought of 12-tone music, yet it’s one of the most influential system of the 20th century. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in