Biber’s Mystery Sonatas, Fabio Luisi’s Nielsen cycle impresses, and Matthias Goerne presents Schubert in Technicolor.

Takács Quartet's latest sees 2023 off to a flying start.

Conservative’s music emerges as shapely and consistently engaging.

Playing with a chamber outfit in Australia can be a pretty precarious profession. We spoke to some of our finest ensembles about the challenges faced and finding that special ingredient that makes them compelling for audiences today.

The German-born maestro is making a comeback thanks to the return of the LP.

Osborne's classy impressions, Takács' sparkling Dvorák, Vänskä and his Minnesotans embrace Mahler's Fifth and more.

Bold, energetic performances of works old and new.

The German tenor explores Parsifal and Lohengrin, plus interviews with Evgeny Kissin, Paco Peña and more.

Misunderstood in their own day, what is it about Beethoven’s late string quartets that keeps players and audiences coming back?

Whilst Debussy’s and Ravel’s quartets have been constant disc-mates since the LP epoch, there is greater artistic justification for hearing Debussy coupled with Franck’s wild, alarming (yet classically built) quartet-plus-piano masterpiece, given that Debussy took ages to expunge Franck’s influence from his system. The Franck Quintet might or might not have been a coded love-letter to the composer’s pupil Augusta Holmès, but it transcends all attempts at biographical reductionism. By comparison, the Debussy, however beguiling, can seem slightly incoherent.That Marc-André Hamelin meets Franck’s punitive technical demands was to be expected. Less predictable (since few will have heard Hamelin in chamber music before) is his collaborative panache. This admirably vivid performance never conveys the feeling of pianist and colleagues going their separate ways. Rather, they catch fire from each other’s interactions. As for the Debussy, the Takács instrumentalists give – thank goodness – the sense that they have never heard of wishy-washy terms like “Impressionism.” They often dare to be downright harsh, above all in the pizzicato-dominated second movement. This is a good account to reassure those who think themselves over-familiar with the composition. The recorded sound, somewhat dry (and markedly kinder to the piano than to the strings), nowhere detracts…

Carl Vine announces a “fantastic year of debuts” for the 2017 season along with the return of some audience favourites.

Editor’s Choice, Chamber – Jan/Feb 2016 In-between a heavy international concert schedule and fulfilling their teaching commitments as resident ensemble at the University of Colorado in Boulder, it’s a wonder that the Takács String Quartet finds time to record for the Hyperion label, let alone live their lives outside of music. Luckily for us they manage, and hot on the heels of their first recorded venture into the wintry landscape of Soviet Russia and Shostakovich with Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin (reviewed in October‘s Limelight), they bring a contrasting blaze of colour, warmth and emotion with their latest release. The three works on this disc are custom-made for the Takács with their fearless attack, faultless technique and dazzling emotional range. Just listen to Geraldine Walther’s driving viola work in the first piece, Bedrich Smetana’s From My Life. This is a remarkable autobiographical work, depicting in the first two movements the Czech composer’s youthful love of art, his fondness for dancing polkas and for folk tunes. The beautiful, yearning slow movement is given over to his first wife, who died from tuberculosis, and two of their daughters who didn’t survive childhood. Of the finale Smetana wrote: “The fourth movement describes my discovery…