Flamboyant theatrics deliver a spectacle that often cries out for a bit more subtlety.

Far from hinting at the avant garde orchestral works to come, Charles Ives’ symphonic debut could almost have been penned by Dvorˇák with Brahms and Tchaikovsky looking over his shoulder. Ives had heard the New York premiere of the New World Symphony and he paid it more than a passing nod, almost channelling the famous Largo (including cor anglais). This engaging work, written when he was still at Yale, shows the insurance salesman-cum-composer was no mere hobbyist. It includes a highly competent fugue in the Scherzo, engaging melodies and skilful use of orchestral palette. The five-movement Second Symphony, championed by Bernstein, is more characteristic with snatches of Stephen Foster’s Camptown Races and American hymns vying with quotes from Beethoven, Brahms, Bach and Wagner. There’s a hint of what was to come in the final bars where it ends on an abrupt, comical key change – a musical thumbing of the nose? The work was applauded at its premiere although Ives is said to have spat at its reception. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra are clearly relishing their collaboration with Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis judging from the playing in both works. Phrasing and tempi are excellent and technically they are up there with overseas orchestras. Production from Chandos is exemplary….

A dazzling display of pianism by a bright, young British talent.

Last month we reviewed the 1954 Rigoletto, not an opera one normally associates with the thrilling tenor, but this recording of Verdi’s Otello from the same year on Decca’s budget Eloquence label features Mario del Monaco in a role which fits him like a glove and which he made very much his own in the 1950s and ‘60s. And it pairs him with Tebaldi as Desdemona. You can tell straight away, despite the obvious drawbacks of a mono recording, exactly why this partnership set the opera world alight for two decades. Their musical chemistry is still potent 60 years on. Alberto Erede conducts the magnificent Accademia di Santa Cecilia with dramatic verve and gusto. Italian baritone Aldo Protti, so compelling as Rigoletto on the companion disc, is equally impressive as the wilily conniving Iago, while tenor Piero de Palma (Cassio) and mezzo Luisa Ribachi (Emilia) give great support. But this is all about Tebaldi and Del Monaco. They had recorded Aida two years earlier so their partnership was well established, but the Decca executives must have been rubbing their hands with glee to have found such a magnificent double act whose true worth would flower with the emergence of stereo…

Anne Sofie von Otter has crossed more genre boundaries than most and with effortless ease, so when DG marked her 60th birthday by asking her to pick her best 10 albums it was no surprise that she would come up with this stunner. The set, branded “10 Classic Albums”, lives up to the name. We get lavish helpings of Brahms, French chansons, late-Romantic lieder and Scandinavian songs alongside von Otter’s brilliant collaboration with Elvis Costello, and we are given a bonus with her 1997 arias from Handel’s Ariodante, her first collaboration with Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre. They also collaborated on an all-Offenbach album, done with wit and elan and even if it’s not your aperitif of choice von Otter’s ability to inhabit the music will impress you. English conductor John Eliot Gardiner is another regular partner and their 1994 Kurt Weill tribute, Speak Low, represented another outstanding departure. Two further jewels in the set are her Baroque ventures with Reinhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Köln, Lamenti and (my favourite) Handel’s Marian Cantatas. But it is her 30-year association with fellow Swede, pianist Bengt Forsberg, which is the beating heart here. Their broad musical landscape takes in Cécile Chaminade’s…

There is something special about the blend of voices among family members – witness the Everlys or the McGarrigals in the pop world  – but there are few instances that exist in the field of classical music. German father and son team Christoph and Julian Prégardien, however, are two exceptional tenors in their own right and have been performing duets over recent years. Now they have taken their popular recitals with pianist Michael Gees into the studio for the Dutch label Challenge Classics. The result, Father and Son, is an entertaining collection of curiosities and rearrangements of what some may consider to be sacred cows. The arrangements, mostly by Julian Prégardien and Gees, include 12 Schubert songs and were the product of rehearsals followed by in-the-moment improvisations, much like you would hear in a folk club. This, they argue, is in the spirit of contemporary accounts of the original Schubertiade evenings. The Goethe setting Der Erlkönig divides logically into the two roles of the night-riding father and the son who dies in his arms. Other songs sit less comfortably as duets, for this listener at least, although the Prégardiens and Gees perform them all impeccably. Two little-known German composers are…

★★★★★ British quartet displays all the characters of a fine vintage wine. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

★★★★★ Zukerman and co give a faultless recital of top-notch chamber music.

Italy in 1954 was steadily emerging from the disasters of the war. Fellini filmed La Strada and in a recording studio in Rome one of the most exciting tenors of the time, Mario del Monaco, was singing a role that we don’t normally associate with him. Rigoletto’s notorious Duke of Mantua is seemingly a perfect fit for the Italian tenor’s virile and thrilling delivery, and yet this post-war studio recording under the steady baton of Alberto Erede – here reissued on Decca Eloquence – is something of a rarity. Del Monaco’s lower larynx technique and testosterone-driven energy are ideal for Verdi’s set pieces Questo o quella and the wonderful quartet. But equal billing must go to Italian baritone Aldo Protti, who was a specialist in the title role having played the nasty court jester well into his 60s, and Austrian soprano Hilde Gueden. The latter with her sweet and light tessitura was a noted Mozartian, but she does equally well here and her scenes with Protti are a highlight. In those pre-stereo days the Decca engineers were yet to perfect their hallmark sound but, despite some balance problems with the woodwind and the inevitable soupy quality of the strings, turn…

Fresh from her triumphant Lucia, German diva Diana Damrau stays in Donizetti territory for her latest solo album, mixed up with some Bellini, Verdi and a couple of verismo numbers for good measure. The 43 year-old has established a glowing reputation in Europe and at New York’s Met where she has become a firm favourite. This collection shows us why. Damrau’s versatility is firmly to the fore in excerpts from Donizetti’s Rosmonda d’Inghliterra and Maria Stuarda, intercut by arias from Bellini’s I Puritani and La Sonnambula, before her applauded dramatic skills are given a workout in selections from Verdi’s I Masnadieri, La Traviata and Luisa Miller. Her vocal accuracy and agility are no better displayed than in Ah! Non giunge from La Sonnambula, but it is what she does with Verdi – and favourites from La Bohème and Pagliacci – which whet the appetite of this reviewer. This is a voice full of power and beauty across the entire range, but with the additional character and buoyancy necessary for the bel canto repertoire. Damrau gets strong support from mezzo Nicole Brandolino, tenor Piotr Beczała and her husband bass Nicolas Testé. The Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino under Gianandrea Noseda has all…

Planets in perfect alignment: David Robertson leads the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's thoughtful journey through the cosmos.

It’s unfortunate that at 51, French tenor Roberto Alagna is probably best remembered for walking off after being booed by the La Scala claque, all captured on YouTube. And then there were tempestuous years with second wife Angela Gheorghiu, which prompted the nickname “the Ceausescus” and for Jonathan Miller to dub them the Bonnie and Clyde of opera. But there have been triumphs as well. From his earliest days, listening to his Sicilian dad singing Italian songs on building sites around Paris, and cathartic moments when he saw Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso and later met Luciano Pavarotti at a record signing, eventually auditioning for him, Alagna’s life has resembled the synopsis of an operatic potboiler. Hence the title of his latest album, My Life Is An Opera, which comes with the most excruciating liner notes I have read for a while and on which he forsakes his earlier crossover hits for some mainly bel canto and verismo arias. In among them he includes a couple of surprises – Ernest Reyer’s Esprits, gardiens des ces lieux vénérés and Karl Goldmark’s Magische Töne, for example, as well as a short excerpt from his brother’s opera The Last Day of a…