Tognetti and his world-class band scale the heights.

The young English soprano Sophie Bevan brings plenty of drama and panache – as well as a yearning tenderness – to a delightful programme of concert arias, including the three written for the Czech diva Josefa Dušek, two by Mozart and the other by a young Beethoven. Over a generous 70 minutes Haydn is well represented by Scena di Berenice and his beautiful Petrach sonnet setting, Solo e pensoso. But it’s the four Mozart pieces and Beethoven’s Ah! Perfido, the album’s closer, which show us why Bevan won the 2010 Critics’ Circle award for Exceptional Young Talent. One of the highlights is the lovely duet with The Mozartists’ oboist Rachel Chaplin in the cavatina from Mozart’s Ah, lo previdi. Bevan is a talent to watch. She’s perfectly suited to this material, admirably backed by the period instruments of The Mozartists.  This is the first recording by the offshoot of Ian Page’s acclaimed Classical Opera, with whom Bevan has recorded whole operas as well as appearing with them regularly in concerts. The 34-year-old has also performed at Covent Garden, English and Welsh National Operas and Glyndebourne as well as in Europe. Perfido! was recorded in a church in Kilburn,… Continue reading Get…

There’s a good smattering of Weill, but the real finds are poignant political and work songs and a Schoenberg pearl.

Gorgeous Gallic flair and something completely different.

We can thank the popularity of Walter Scott’s wildly romantic novels for the popularity of Scotland as setting for 19th-century Italian operas. If you add a German dramatist in Heinrich Heine and an Irish orchestra and chorus then this highly attractive new release of Pietro Mascagni’s neglected masterpiece Guglielmo Ratcliff has a truly global provenance. The composer first started work on it as a student in Milan following an unsuccessful love affair but it got put aside. After the success of Cavalleria Rusticana, Mascagni completed it but the tenor role was so challenging that after a successful premiere and a short run the work fell into obscurity. The hero is the spurned lover of Maria, disturbed since boyhood by an apparition of two lovers who can never have each other. Every time Maria is about to marry, her suitor gets killed – no prizes for guessing the perpetrator! The action centres on four monologues, one by Maria’s father MacGregor, two by Ratcliff himself and one by Margherita (“the mad woman of the castle”). This Wexford Festival production under Francesco Cilluffo is a corker. Angelo Villari thrills as Ratcliff, aided by a mainly Italian solo cast with the… Continue reading Get…

Stunning artistry and fireworks from a young violin queen.

Goerne's recording debut with Italian-Austrian pianist Markus Hinterhauser yields musical chemistry that is immediately apparent.

Visceral Vivaldi brought vividly to life by Sydney’s very finest.

Young Uzbek virtuoso lights up the Utzon to spectacular effect.

American cellist and composer Clancy Newman at a recent concert described Dvořák’s Dumky Trio as something you might hear al fresco – three skilled musicians having fun in an informal and spontaneous way and maybe with the hat out. There’s not much of the street corner busk about France’s Trio Wanderer’s reading of the work on their new album, or if there is it’s one of those elegant Parisian ones built by Baron Haussmann. The piece is played with a little too much Gallic sangfroid for this reviewer who prefers a more hectic, Bohemian feel to the slow-fast six-movement work, the last of the four Dvořák wrote and completed shortly before he took up his post in America. There are no such reservations with the impeccable way they handle the other work on the album, the Op. 65 Third Trio which is, on the whole, darker hued and more in the Brahmsian mould. Its uncharacteristically melancholic third movement is thought to be an expression of Dvořák’s grief at the loss of his mother, followed by an Allegro finale which seems to say “OK, let’s get on with life.” This is their 15th release for Harmonia Mundi, and… Continue reading Get…

The US tenor Timothy Fallon seems poised on the cusp of fame, judging from the debut release with his regular recital partner the Israeli-South African pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. The duo appear regularly at London’s Wigmore Hall, winning the 2013 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition. Fallon is also making a name in Europe where he appears regularly with Oper Leipzig and he is heard on a couple of Pentatone’s Wagner series under Marek Janowski. Fine diction and a lovely clear higher register even across all the dynamics, from a lovely sotto voce to full-blooded fortissimos, are qualities he brings to this BIS recording of 15 songs by Franz Liszt. His expressive voice is nimble and nuanced and he pays great attention to the text, teasing out the subtle colours and shades while Bushakevitz’s sensitive piano keeps momentum going. They work seamlessly together and there is plenty of scope for dramatic stretch, with the standout Drei Lieder aus Schillers Wilhelm Tell and the three Petrarch sonnet settings both offering plenty of emotional shifts and experimental harmonies. The disc covers 40 years of Liszt’s output and takes in four languages, with settings of Victor Hugo and Tennyson also… Continue reading Get unlimited…

There’s plenty to like about young German pianist Joseph Moog’s approach to Chopin’s three sonatas. The works span 27 years – almost the length of Chopin’s career. The seldom-recorded No 1 sees the teenage student experimenting with form and time signatures (witness the unusual 5/4 for the Allegretto) and is a rarity. Moog makes an eloquent case for having it heard more often, especially in the superbly restless finale. Just about every pianist worth their salt has recorded the other two works. The B Minor Second was famously described by Schumann as four of Chopin’s “maddest children harnessed together” to form a sonata. Moog takes the famous funeral march extremely slowly – it clocks in at over 10’ (compare Martha Argerich’s 8’34’’ or Ivo Pogorelich’s brisk 6’34’’) – but while other approaches are more weighty the beautiful nocturne-like middle section is played with affecting simplicity. The famous brief flurry of triplet quavers that follows, the “wind blowing over my grave” as the 19th-century virtuoso Tausig described it, is dispatched with breathtaking panache. Moog is equally astute in the Third Sonata, which many consider contains some of the finest Romantic music written for the instrument. Still only 30,… Continue reading Get…