One feels that it’s very much the pianist’s hand on the throttle of Weber’s ghost train, plunging ahead one moment, the next, pulling back.

The mezzo soprano finds herself on top for once as she goes back to basics with an original instrument Norma. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

German Chancellor figures out what to give to the man who has everything (and, of course, nothing). Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Rolls Royce of string quartets say farewell to our shores with grace, elegance and more than a hint of nostalgia.

Ahead of her Australian dates, the German violinist talks music, Mendelssohn and staying up late with Ivry Gitlis.

Romance was in the air as Irish singer proposes to girlfriend onstage at Welsh National Opera. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Poor choice of words by ABC News links Sydney’s flagship dance company with troubled inner-west studio. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Forget the Complete Wagner with its paltry 43 CDs – this monolith, weighing in at a gargantuan 75 discs, beats all comers this year – that is if you can manage to struggle home with it from the shop! From 1840 to 1860, Giuseppe Verdi produced a new opera nearly every year. A slowpoke compared with some of his contemporaries (the likes of Donizetti and Pacini could
whack out three or four operas
a year) but considering that
Verdi’s output included works
like Nabucco, Macbeth, Rigoletto,
La Traviata, Il Trovatore and Un
Ballo In Maschera, that’s pretty good
going by anyone’s standards. He slowed down over the following 30 years, with only five more works seeing the light of day – but what masterworks they were! Decca and Deutsche Grammophon have made so many recordings over the years that it comes as no surprise that Universal Music are able to curate a “complete works” of the depth of quality that we have here. The classic sets include Kleiber’s La Traviata with Cotrubas and Domingo, Abbado’s Macbeth, Giulini’s Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, Domingo’s finest Otello and Karajan’s earlier Aida. We also get both versions of La Forza del Destino (St Petersburg and Milan) and both French and Italian…

Four projects, two couples, one ensemble – it’s a full-time juggling job for a quartet of Australia’s busiest musicians. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The image of heavyweight composer and patriarchal guardian of a decaying romantic tradition makes it easy to forget that Brahms started out as a virtuoso concert pianist. It is equally easy to forget that his third and final sonata, for his own instrument, was completed at the ridiculously precocious age of 20 (during a sojourn with his new friends Robert and Clara Schumann). From then on it was as if he had said all that he wanted to say in the genre, and his large scale piano compositions were henceforth confined to sets of variations – those on themes of Paganini and Handel being the most substantial. For his ambitious (and auspicious) debut on the BIS label, the British pianist Jonathan Plowright exhibits a prodigious musical appetite, tackling the meaty Third Sonata for his main course with the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel making for a rich and sumptuous dessert. The sonata again confounds any expectations you might have of Brahms as a structural conservative, being cast in no less than five contrasting movements, linked with a recognisably Beethovian thematic motto. It receives a carefully considered yet intensely dramatised reading, more tempestuous in approach than, say Radu…

Opera Australia celebrates the great man’s birthday with a life-sized Valkyrie helmet cake.

ABC’s Fran Kelly gets it warts and all from the director of The Great Gatsby.