Fisch's first Mahler Two is more than worth the wait.

In the war against superficiality, guitarist Miloš Karadaglić had two handicaps to overcome: he was too handsome and made things look too easy.

★★★★★ Asher Fisch returns for 2016 with a knockout Teutonic Trio.

Pianist, composer and arranger Joe Chindamo and violinist Zoë Black are more than capable of transcending their specialities of jazz and classical.

★★★★☆ A violinist’s soloistic fireworks and a grand symphony open WASO’s 2016 season in fine style.

A handful of Limelight critics are spoiled for choice picking their favourite recordings.

A highly detailed and sympathetically recorded account with astonishingly brilliant orchestral playing.

Editor’s Choice, Jan/Feb 2016 – Vocal & Choral “Those who find everything beautiful are now in danger of finding nothing beautiful.” So wrote Theodor Adorno in Minima Moralia. And yet according to composer Cary Ratcliff, the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda “wrote four volumes of odes to ordinary objects”. Of course that’s not all he wrote; Neruda was after all one of the greatest love poets of all time, and the other two composers featured on this recording of choral settings of Neruda’s poetry have availed themselves of some of his most moving love poems. Texas-based vocal ensemble Conspirare’s director Craig Hella Johnson writes in a booklet note that he hopes these settings “can serve as a conduit for an ever deepening experience with this sublime and powerful poetry.” And indeed they may, so convincingly do they translate Neruda’s delicate emotional chiaroscuro into accessible music of great lyrical potency. In Ratcliff’s Ode to Common Things, it is clear that the poet “loves all things” because of their connections with humanity: whether a bed, a guitar, a loaf of bread or a pair of scissors, they are for the poet “perfect things built by human hand” and “so alive”. In Kirchner’s…

Agostino Steffani (1654-1728) set words to music as only a master linguist and singer could. His beautiful chamber duets were influential on Handel’s essays in that genre, while Steffani’s sacred music and French-influenced operas seem to grow out of the duet as a fundamental unit of composition. Steffani spent two decades working in Munich and Niobe, Regina di Tebe, composed in 1687, was his final opera for that city. Based on an episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Luigi Orlandi’s libretto tells the story of Queen Niobe’s downfall after being handed the regency by her husband Anfione, King of Thebes. Assailed by love and hate in equal measure – Tiberino, son of the King of Alba, wants Thebes for himself; the vengeful magician Poliferno assists lovestruck Creonte in his own ambitions for queen and kingdom – Niobe ultimately succumbs to pride and is duly punished by the gods. The music is glorious, Steffani’s adroit handling of recitative and aria matched by his generous orchestrations utilising strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. Captured live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, this performance conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock and featuring Véronique Gens as Niobe, Jacek Laszczkowski as Anfione, Alastair Miles as Poliferno and Iestyn Davies as Creonte…

Once you accept music as a living, breathing language, and that there’s a big difference between restoration and renovation, you can really let your hair down and have some fun. As Concerto Caledonia’s director David McGuinness writes in the booklet accompanying this thoroughly entertaining follow-up to their equally irreverent 2011 take on Britten’s folksong arrangements Revenge of the Folksingers, “there’s almost a generally accepted international style in which to play baroque music, an idea which would have seemed preposterous in the musically diverse Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries.” As with the earlier CD, Purcell’s Revenge is based on a live gig, and Concerto Caledonia (whose lineup includes early music luminaries like recorder player Pamela Thorby and Alison McGillivray on gamba), again teams up with folk musicians. Countertenor legend James Bowman is thrown in for good measure. The repertoire ranges from arrangements of Purcell faves such as the Rondeau from Abdelazer, Sweeter than Roses and Fairest Isle to Purcell-inspired originals such as Chaney’s Cassiopeia and Silvera’s Halos. Despite mixed results – I was more convinced by Jim Moray’s electric guitar than his vocal abilities – the overall effect is intoxicating. But the highlight must be Chaney’s utterly exquisite arrangement and performance…

Girl bands comprising recorder consorts probably aren’t going to catch on anytime soon. But if they do, UK ensemble Consortium5 could lay claim to being supergroup of the recorder world. Not only do they regularly collaborate with contemporary composers and performers in unique and challenging ways; they are also committed to the preservation of earlier music for what was for centuries one of the most popular instruments in Europe. The consort – a set of matched instruments such as viols or, as here, recorders, in different sizes – which flourished in Europe between the late 15th and early 17th centuries, undoubtedly quickened the development of complex instrumental music in its own right. Elizabethan consort music however represents one of the high points of the genre, with the free exchange between transcriptions of vocal polyphonic works, so-called In Nomines, and more abstract fantasias and dances further enlivened by consort songs and broken consorts (usually strings and winds). Performing on a set of 10 Renaissance recorders, this release finds them moving among the In Nomines of Byrd and Tye, the dances of Ferrabosco and Dowland, the madrigalian fantasias of Coperario and Ward and more besides. Think of a solitary organist producing sounds…

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