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

Share the Sydney Opera House stage with Australia’s most popular leading men. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

A panel of more than 100 of today’s leading concert pianists chooses the Russian virtuoso.

La Stupenda is the face of the issue nominated for the 2011 Magazine Cover Awards.

Steve Reich’s highly anticipated September 11 lament comes ten years after the terrorist attacks and the release itself was not without controversy (note the revised album artwork). His account is everything we have come to expect from America’s greatest minimalist, and therein lies the problem. WTC 9/11 serves as a bookend to the Kronos Quartet’s 1988 collaboration with the composer, Different Trains: a profound work in which the strings echo the sampled speech of Holocaust survivors. Reich has rehashed the technique, this time with the voices of air traffic controllers and firemen who were among the first to grasp the magnitude of the American tragedy. What fails to move me is the mimicry, so poignant in Different Trains but cumbersome and almost tasteless here. Redeeming melodic interest comes in a reflective section of Hebrew Psalms, sung by Jews who prayed for the dead on the scene. Just shy of 16 minutes long, WTC 9/11 is as immediately terse and engaging as, say, Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. Reich’s structure and economy of means are masterful, but with the entire disc running to only 36 minutes I feel short-changed, despite the inclusion… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from…

The Latitude 37 trio has added its refined voice to Australia’s small but vibrant early music community, with a debut release that adheres to much the same winning formula as the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s Baroque Tapas, also featuring Laura Vaughan. One senses the ensemble’s inventiveness as a whole as well as the personalities of the players and their guests. Their rapport is most rewarding in Salaverde’s Canzon a due, where Julia Fredersdorff’s sweet-toned Baroque violin interlaces with the drier gamba passages, sensitively underscored by Donald Nicolson on chamber organ. The overall selection is perhaps more solemn than that of Tapas, as in the opening regal procession of Diego Ortiz’s Passamezzo antico and two pieces by Caccini and Palestrina, with Siobhán Stagg’s light soprano beaming through clouds. Some tracks replace gamba with the lirone, an Italian continuo instrument with a unique, gossamer sheen to its plaintive chords.  There’s plenty to liven up proceedings: Guy du Blêt’s varied percussion is essential to the success of the album in exuberant spagnoletta dance rhythms and a rustic Kapsberger passacaglia. Improvised, virtuosic flourishes over ground bass are executed by all players with flair. A small world, but one full of discovery. Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Brisbane-born flautist Tim Munro is on the new music adventure of a lifetime with this quirky Chicago sextet.

The alt-rock icon says Schubert was a "guiding light" for her classical album Night of Hunters.

The iconic tenor is bound for Australia for the first time in 15 years. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Melbourne Festival artistic director Brett Sheehy serves up a classical music feast like no other. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

There are only a handful of vocal ensembles in Australia equipped to give persuasive and informed performances of Renaissance liturgical music. This Sydney-based early music group certainly has the right choral credentials, having formed in 2009 after members took part in the Tallis Scholars Summer School program. The Parsons Affayre model themselves after that revered choir in English Catholic Renaissance repertoire; this latest disc follows a release devoted to the music of their namesake, Tudor composer Robert Parsons. The new album takes its title from the florid Stabat mater of William Cornysh (d 1523). It is one of the most impressive performances here: pure, soaring soprano lines, expertly balanced in counterpoint with the basses, maintain momentum through time changes. Inner voices, however, are less assured. Byrd’s famous motet Ave verum corpus is well controlled and casts an appropriately solemn mood, but might have benefited from more contrast and expansive shaping. His Infelix ego is sweet and airy in sustained soprano notes. The basses are the stars of the darker-hued Tallis Lamentations of Jeremiah I. This reading opens rigidly but weaving polyphonic textures begin to bloom beautifully as the choir warms to the work. The plaintive, repeated cries of  “Jerusalem” towards…

Elena Kats-Chernin discusses the pressure of basing her first symphony on the Queensland floods. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in