Mozart, Bach, Haydn and Handel top the bill, but there's plenty of new music too in SPC's 2022 program.

The CSO showcases three outstanding Australian composers in this satisfying concert.

Sonata repertoire enhanced by three individual new works.

Duo Histoire handpicks its best-loved works in this new release.

Australian compositions may not immediately spring to mind when you consider the great 20th-century symphonies but, argues Rhoderick McNeill, there is a significant body of work worth celebrating.

From 2011 to 2015, the Australian National Academy of Music and the Melbourne Recital Centre presented the Australian Voices concert series, celebrating significant Australian composers. Included was a programme of chamber works by Stuart Greenbaum (b. 1966). This recording, released on ANAM’s own imprint, features seven Academy musicians with harpist and ANAM alumna Jessica Fotinos, performing three works by Greenbaum in which harp plays a central role. Mondrian Interiors is a collection of eight pieces inspired by an exhibition of works by the Dutch artist, with works scored for combinations of oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, piano and harp. Four Finalities is a song cycle written in collaboration with poet Ross Baglin and performed by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean. The delicate interplay between Betts-Dean’s forcefully ethereal voice and the harp is utterly captivating, enhanced by a rich and spacious recording sonic. Finally, Nine Candles for Dark Nights is solo harp piece written for Australian harpist Marshall McGuire that explores and expands the sonic capacities of this instrument. This is a tremendously accessible collection of works that balances the obvious beauty of the harp with subtly nuanced complementary sonorities. The performances are fresh and exciting, and it’s to be hoped that we’ll… Continue reading Get…

Melbourne composer Stuart Greenbaum’s chamber works, like all the sympathetically brought out in these performances by one of New Zealand’s leading chamber ensembles, NZTrio. Head of Composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium, Greenbaum has written opera, choral, orchestral, chamber and solo instrumental music. This new recording features eight works exploring the latter two genres from between 1999 and 2011. The title work, 800 Million Heartbeats, takes the nominal number of heartbeats in a human life as a metaphor for life’s journey. Falling by Degrees explores gravity and falling in seven miniatures. Equator Loops and Lunar Orbit are for solo piano and cello respectively, while The Lake and the Hinterland and Scarborough Variations combine both instruments. The Year Without A Summer takes the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora as its subject. Greenbaum says his music “aims to evoke an atmosphere apart from the routine of modern life”. But by drawing on familiar styles such as blues, pop and jazz, his music celebrates modern life in all its forms. It simply jettisons the routine. Thus 800 Million Heartbeats tells the story of our lives through soaring string melodies singing over the steady pulse of piano figurations. In Falling by Degrees, ghostly harmonics, agitated pizzicatos and deliberately naïve descending scales through up images as diverse as snow, parachutes, anchors and…