Telemann serves tapas in a rich and entertaining listening experience.

It’s as difficult to know where to start describing the brilliance of this album as it is to avoid superlatives. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolin player Chris Thile and bassist Edgar Meyer are masters of their respective instruments. All are fluent in different musical styles and genres. All have collaborated with each other, either as duos or as part of a larger ensemble, on many occasions. All have performed and recorded JS Bach’s works for solo cello or violin to critical acclaim, so one can immediately assume a certain facility and intimacy when playing Bach together. Here, they present a programme comprising arrangements of mostly keyboard works, the only exception being the Viola da Gamba Sonata No 3 in G Minor. There is the Trio Sonata No 6 in G, the Passepied from the Partita No 5 in G, an excerpt from The Art of Fugue and a selection of preludes and fugues and chorale preludes. There are flashes of extreme virtuosity, such as the breakneck section in the E Minor Fugue BWV548, originally for organ. There are almost heartbreakingly beautiful renderings of some of Bach’s most famous chorale preludes, such as Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV721 and… Continue reading Get…

As with previous recordings by The Binchois Consort – such as Music for Henry V and the House of Lancaster – Music for the 100 Years’ War places a cappella sacred music in its historical context through a judicious mix of scholarship and speculation. The motivation in this case was to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415. But as the consort’s director Andrew Kirkman and Philip Weller write in their detailed booklet note, “In doing so [the programme] also casts its net wider, embracing other aspects and events” of the war of which Agincourt “formed but one part – albeit a heroic and iconic part.” Here, therefore, are carols, motets and sections of masses which might have been performed during Henry V’s campaign by members of “an enormous retinue”, which included a fully functioning liturgical and musical chapel. Such is the quality of the music and the performances that one can be left in no doubt that the creativity which grew out of the greater culture of the time and nourished it in turn can be equally inspiring today. This is music that sounds as fresh as though it were written just yesterday…

Benjamin Britten’s interest in the music of his great Baroque predecessor Henry Purcell extended far beyond basing his Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra on the Rondeau from Purcell’s Abdelazer suite. Purcell’s songs were championed in Britten’s own idiosyncratic arrangements for piano and voice.Purcell’s music for string consort also exerted a fascination for Britten whose String Quartet No 2 contains a Chacony: a direct homage to Purcell’s  ‘chaconne’ for four-part string ensemble. Britten made a performing edition of Purcell’s Chacony in the late 1950s (revised in 1963), and this is the version used by the Emerson String Quartet – here celebrating their 40th anniversary with the first release on Decca’s new Decca Gold label – in a fascinating programme which also includes a selection of Purcell’s Fantazias for viol consort along with Britten’s Second and Third String Quartets. Despite some three centuries and enormous stylistic differences separating the two composers, their music complements each other’s rather well – which is unsurprising, given Britten’s updating of archaic forms and Purcell’s love of dissonance and complexity.Unsurprising too, in this instance, given the Emersons’ insightful and highly expressive readings, which find the modern in Purcell and the ancient in Britten… Continue reading Get…

“There has never been in the history of music a child prodigy to equal Mendelssohn,” pianist and author Charles Rosen once wrote. “As a teenager, he was a much better composer than either Beethoven or Mozart at the same age.” And yet, as Rosen continues, “Mendelssohn’s precocity was a curse as well as a gift. Because of it, he never matched the extravagance of his greater contemporaries.” That may be true. Though what does extravagance have to do with genius? Anyway, as those of us who love Felix Mendelssohn’s music know, there’s a lot more to admire in his substantial oeuvre than those great masterpieces of his teenage years, the Octet and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Violin Concerto and maybe some of the Songs Without Words. Like the five symphonies, for instance, which achieve a startling unity and variety within single works and in relation to each other through Mendelssohn elegantly working out the implications of existing models. The First wears its debt to Mozart on its sleeve but is impeccably crafted and exhilarating to listen to. The Second, the extraordinary symphony-cantata known as the Hymn of Praise, seeks to reconcile the Baroque… Continue reading Get…

This startling new recording presents a modern form of pasticcio or, as countertenor and project originator Philippe Jaroussky says, a work that was “conceived as a kind of opera in miniature or as a cantata for two solo voices and chorus.” It also reminds us there were other fine operas on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice written after Striggio and Monteverdi’s famous favola in musica. (As there were, of course, before it, such as Rinuccini and Peri’s 1600 L’Euridice. Here again we have the tragic and all-too-familiar story of Orpheus’s doomed attempt to rescue his beloved Eurydice, who had perished after being bitten by a serpent, from Hades’ realm. But by stitching together elements of three operas written decades apart – Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607), Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo (1647) and Antonio Sartorio’s L’Orfeo (1672) – we are introduced not just to bracing chiaroscuro effects that serve to heighten the drama; such anachronisms also demonstrate the changing styles of, and tastes in, music over nearly 70 years of the Baroque period. This was clearly a labour of love for Jaroussky (Orpheus). And what a fine thing to get such collaborators as Hungarian soprano Emöke Baráth (Eurydice), I Barocchisti,… Continue reading Get…

Australian trumpet player Paul Terracini is an experienced soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, as well as a conductor and teacher. His decision to focus more on composition is borne out by the excellence of the five works for brass ensemble recorded here. The instrumentation is mostly trumpets/horns/trombones/tuba, with the two multi-movement works including timpani and percussion. The odd man out is the Exaudi Orationem Nostram for eight trumpets. Gegensätze contrasts two sections, one lively, the other reflective. In Behind the Shining Door, based on one of Terracini’s choral works, a gentle trumpet melody with accompaniment builds to a climax before sliding into repose. If the outer movements of Concerto for Brass are portraits of a bustling contemporary world, its central movement, based on the medieval chant Pange Lingua, is a serene oasis of contemplation. Its cousin Exaudi Orationem Nostram is a ‘prayer’ in which a multi-faceted motif based on ascending and descending sixths picks up the light as it rolls onwards, delighting in its own beauty. Winmalee Mourning was inspired by a bushfire that destroyed nearly 200 homes in the Blue Mountains village of Winmalee, west of Sydney, in 2013. The first movement, Inferno, paints a picture of paradise lost,…

Subtitled The Rise of English Polyphony 1270-1430, this latest recording from The Orlando Consort weaves a rich, stylistically diverse musical tapestry across nearly two centuries of early English polyphony. Originally formed in 1988 to explore repertoire from the period 1050-1550, the UK-based a cappella ensemble – currently comprising countertenor Matthew Venner, tenors Mark Dobell and Angus Smith and baritone Donald Greig – have occasionally branched out into contemporary music. Beneath the Northern Star finds them on home ground, featuring music by some of the leading lights of medieval English music such as Leonel Power and John Dunstaple, as well as lesser-known composers like Johannes Alanus, Thomas Damett, Robert Chirbury and the most prolific of all, Anonymous. All these motets and movements from mass settings are for three voices; the exception is the four-voice Credo from the Old Hall Manuscript which brings the recording to a close. The stylistic diversity is apparent in the variety of musical techniques, not just from composer to composer but from within different periods of a single composer’s career. Many of these devices are easy to hear once you know what you’re listening for. The second track, the anonymous Stella maris nuncuparis uses the rondellus technique,…

On the 250th anniversary of the death of one of the Baroque period’s most prolific composers, we ask if more can be more. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

In some ways, this recording is quite a departure for the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. In other ways, it isn’t. Who else but an ensemble specialising in historically-informed performances on period instruments could bring such innate understanding to the Baroque underpinnings of Grieg’s From Holberg’s Time – Suite in the Olden Style and Mendelssohn’s early String Symphony No 3 in E Minor? As for the ABO’s other novel offering – Paganini’s fiendishly difficult Violin Concerto No 4 – there’s a real lightness, crispness and suppleness required here that makes a HIP technique perfectly suited to Paganini’s OTT showmanship. This is especially the case with the ABO’s guest director and soloist, Netherlands-based violinist Shunske Sato. Concertmaster of both Concerto Köln and the Netherlands Bach Society, Sato is equally at home on modern and historical instruments. He is also clearly equally at home in repertoire as diverse as the three aforementioned works, here recorded live last year by Classic FM at Sydney’s City Recital Hall. The Grieg is given a delightful freshness, a newly-minted quality, by contrasting a generous use of portamenti with a parsimonious application of vibrato throughout. This lends a luminous clarity both to the lyrical movements such… Continue reading Get…

Without André Grétry (1741-1813) there wouldn’t be opera as we know it. The first French composer to successfully marry French and Italian styles in the Classical period, Grétry’s melodic and dramatic gifts coupled with a strong desire to push opera to its limits ensured his lasting fame. First performed at Versailles in 1778 before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, L’Amant Jaloux, ou Les Fausses Apparences (The Jealous Lover, or False Appearances) was an immediate success. The setting is Cadiz, Spain. The rich Don Lopez (baritone David Greco) forbids his widowed daughter Léonore (soprano Celeste Lazarenko) to marry again. But she is in love with the eponymous jealous lover, Don Alonze (tenor Ed Lyon), who has a sister Isabelle (soprano Alexandra Oomens), who is Léonore’s friend and the beloved of French officer Florival (tenor Andrew Goodwin). Without giving too much away, much mayhem ensues before the happy ending. Erin Helyard directs cast and orchestra – both of which are uniformly excellent – from the keyboard with great attention to detail yet with a sure grasp of forward momentum. We also get snippets of English dialogue which must have made live performances from which this recording was made an… Continue reading Get…

I’ve been listening to a lot of Schumann lately, so it was with some pleasure I discovered that young Australian guitarist/composer Paul Ballam-Cross also finds Schumann “deeply inspiring” as he admits in the note on his self-titled debut recital. Ballam-Cross’s Two Portraits of One Subject is dedicated to Schumann. But those same qualities of melancholy, intimacy and nostalgia permeate the entire programme, which comprises works by Schumann (of course), Bach (a favourite of Schumann’s), Tárrega (who adored Schumann’s music), Chopin (born the same year as, and championed by, Schumann) and Sor (whose three studies evoke a kind of Schumannesque saudade). Tárrega’s preludes owe a debt to Chopin, and it is with Tárrega’s transcription of Chopin’s Mazurka No 4 that Ballam-Cross prefaces his sensitively rendered performances of those nine miniature masterpieces. He opens his recital, however, with Bach’s oft-performed-on-guitar Suite No 1 in G. He makes of it a spacious, searching prelude to the rest of the programme, which then moves through Sor to Ballam-Cross’s own lyrical, musical commentaries on Schumann’s work and personality, Chopin and Tárrega, before coming to rest, appropriately, on the latter’s transcription of Schumann’s Bunte Blätter No 1. This is a beautiful and thoughtful debut, which as…