English pianist Jonathan Plowright continues to stake his claim for recording the modern benchmark set of Brahms piano works with this fourth volume in BIS’s superlative series. This despite stiff competition from Irishman Barry Douglas, who has already completed his six-volume set for Chandos and the redoubtable Paul Lewis who coupled the Four Ballades with his recent five-star reading of the First Piano Concerto. The difference in approach between Plowright and Douglas is no better demonstrated than in the third Intermezzo from the Piano Pieces Op. 119. It’s marked grazioso e giocoso and Plowright dispatches it with infectious high spirits in 1’15’’ while Douglas chooses more grace than jocularity with a generous 1’51’’. Plowright bookends this latest programme with the first and second sets of the 30 Paganini Variations. Played straight through they are tedious for listener and performer alike, but Plowright’s solution is a fine one. He plays the other works – the Ballades, Rhapsodies and Piano Pieces Op. 119 – in their original groupings whereas the adventurous Douglas seasons a set of Cappricios with a single Ballade or Intermezzo. So, very different approaches from two very different performers. Ultimately the choice will be yours. If you can… Continue…

When they were 14, the Jerusalem Quartet were considered The Monkees of the classical world because they were “manufactured” by the Jerusalem Music Centre. Since then, with one change of personnel (violist Ori Kam replacing Amihai Grosz in 2010), they have established themselves in the top echelon of chamber groups. They continue their wide and impressive discography with this awe-inspiring reading of three of Béla Bartók’s six quartets. Led by the charismatic Alexander Pavlovsky, the Jerusalems are a tight, exciting unit, brilliant in attack but also uncannily sensitive. Sergei Bresler’s violin sparks off Pavlovksy’s and Kam is the equal of his predecessor in every respect. Kyril Zlotnikov, playing one of Jacqueline du Pré’s instruments loaned to him by Daniel Barenboim, is a formidable cellist, driving and astute. Together they bring out every nuance of these awe-inspiring works, from the Fourth’s scurrying insect-like ‘night music’ of the prestissimo second movement to the heart-rending mesto finale of the Sixth, composed at a time when Bartók was down on his uppers and mourning his mother’s death. The Jerusalems brought the house down when they played the Allegretto Pizzicato as an encore when they were here in 2016 on their… Continue reading Get unlimited…

This lovely disc from Hyperion completes brilliant young British violinist Jack Liebeck’s survey of the three Bruch concertos with the excellent BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins. At its heart is the Second Violin Concerto which, despite being championed by Perlman and Heifitz, still remains shamefully neglected in the concert hall. Proudly romantic with big singing melodies and death-defying solo passages, it has all the hallmarks of the great 19th century barnstormers and shows that the ever-popular First Concerto was no fluke. Liebeck and his smooth-toned Guadagnini take it on with magnificent aplomb. Originally composed for the Spanish virtuoso Sarasate, the 36-year-old Londoner shows he has golden tone, character to spare and a dazzling technique. The disc’s other three works are equally enjoyable. Bruch considered the Adagio Appassionato one of his best works. Konzertstück started out as the ‘Fourth Concerto’ but Bruch refused to add a third movement. He probably felt that not much needed to be said after its glorious Adagio. Bruch described In Memoriam, a single movement which starts with an ominous tattoo from the timpani, as “a lamentation, a kind of instrumental elegy”. Liebeck, seen in Australia last year with Trio Dali for Musica Viva, gets…

Yende makes a compelling case for a place in your collection with this finely-engineered and recorded disc.

Showstopper after showstopper from the man who lives and breathes Liszt.

This album is a little charmer from one of Australia’s finest chamber groups, the Omega Ensemble. Led by David Rowden, it starts with a lovely, nuanced performance of Mozart’s gorgeous Clarinet Quintet. Rowden uses a basset clarinet, the instrument with the extra low notes developed by Anton Stadler, for whom the work was composed. Those woody bass notes that so fascinated Mozart are on display from the outset, enhanced by the ABC’s closely placed microphones. The string quartet, led by Catalin Ungureanu, are fine equal partners in the “conversation” with the soloist and listen out for second violinist Airena Nakamura’s dialogue with Rowden in the beautiful Larghetto. Ian Munro’s three-part quintet Songs from the Bush mixes folk tunes with contemporary themes. For the outer movements, Country Dance and Drover’s Lament,  Munro raids his well-thumbed copy of John Meredith’s Folk Songs of Australia for snippets while the spacious middle section evokes a camp fire under the great Australian night sky. The final work is a corker: It Takes Two – Concerto for Two Clarinets by George Palmer, for which Rowden is joined by Dimitri Ashkenazy. Commissioned in 2008, the former Supreme Court Judge came up with a delightful tribute… Continue reading…

The tolerant opera buff will be rewarded with this latest volume in Desiree Records’ Great Voices of Australia series.

Cutting edge Beethoven from La La Land foursome.

A return to first love: Brodskys bring searing intensity to a cycle of "old friends".

Mezzo-soprano superstar Joyce DiDonato’s latest album of Baroque opera arias started life as a project to bring to light some Neapolitan rarities, but it took a swift hairpin turn in November last year following the brutal terror attacks in Paris. The Kansas diva and the crack Il Pomo d’Oro under their exciting young Russian Chief Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev ditched the programme and came up with a selection of “war and peace” arias, all of them sending a strong message in troubled times. “As I have tried to convey in this selection of music, the power to bravely tip the scales towards peace lies firmly within every single one of us,” DiDonato says. Drawing mainly on much-loved arias from Handel and Purcell, the mezzo is in sizzling form, attacking the bellicose material with gusto. She looks like a lioness in profile on the cover and that is the feeling she brings here – you’d be a fool to mess with her! In stark contrast the “peace” songs, including back-to-back “swoon” tracks of Dido’s Lament by Purcell and Handel’s Lascia ch’io pianga from Rinaldo, are delivered with a glorious mixture of grace and irresistible sweetness. She does include some… Continue reading Get unlimited…

I thought the Takács Quartet set the bar pretty high with last year’s Hyperion recording of the two Janáček string quartets, but that was before Swiss outfit Quartetto Energie Nove released this gem on the Dynamic label. Made up of the principal string players of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, the foursome has a slim discography – just the two Prokofiev quartets – but the sheer quality of their playing and the marvellous production standard of both these albums argue strongly that we should be hearing a lot more of them in the future. Energie Nove – violinists Hans Liviabella and Barbara Ciannamea, violist Ivan Vukčević (an Aussie!) and cellist Felix Vogelsang – bill this release as a world premiere of a “critically edited and ‘Urtext’ version” of the two quartets. The main changes are in the second, Intimate Letters, written in the last year of the composer’s life and which was being rehearsed for its premiere by the Moravian Quartet just before Janácˇek died. Some changes had been made at these rehearsals attended by the composer, the chief among them being his decision to abandon the use of the viola d’amore in favour of its more conventional four-stringed cousin….

Sydney ensemble round off a stunning season with plenty of Sturm und Drang.