Just as the guitar is accustomed to finding itself “between worlds”, popping up in almost every imaginable genre of music, so too has the mandolin long held a place in the hearts of musicians from folk, popular and classical genres – for the latter, just think of Vivaldi and Beethoven’s wonderful works. But contemporary mandolinists like Chris Thile and present artist Avi Avital are taking things to a whole new level, performing Bach with a facility and sensitivity that would put many violinists to shame. This time round, Israeli-born Avital tackles different folk traditions, albeit from a classical perspective – hence the recording’s title. And while much here will be familiar – Bartók’s Roumanian Folk Dances or Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No 5 – there are also less well-known works such as Sulkhan Tsintsadze’s Miniatures On Georgian Folk Themes. But whether it’s Bloch, Monti, Dvorˇák, Falla or Piazzolla, the performances and arrangements here are so fresh and novel that everything sounds new. Of course it helps that Avital is joined by a formidable line-up of soloists, including harpist Caitlin Finch, accordionist and fellow Bach exponent Richard Galliano and klezmer virtuoso clarinetist Giora Feidman. And that the different instrumental…

An auspicious start to WASO’s 2014 season and Fisch’s tenure as Principal Conductor.

American indie rock band guitarist Bryce Dessner’s debut classical recording comes with excellent credentials. Dessner is a Yale graduate who studied classical guitar, flute and composition and who has worked with some of the best in the business including Reich, Glass and David Lang. While his style leans towards a minimalist aesthetic he’s open to and range of influences, from early music through to rock and pop. Aheym – “homeward” in Yiddish – immediately grabs the ear with its sharp, unanimous rhythms before opening out into hypnotic ostinati and a multitude of dazzling timbres and colours. Little Blue Something is more restrained, intimate, even melancholy. Tenebre takes its inspiration from the Holy Week office of tenebrae, for which Renaissance composers in particular wrote such dazzling music. Dessner achieves extraordinary sonic effects here, with ghostly passages recalling the sound of a glass harmonica. This is aural chiaroscuro at its most compelling, made even more so by a multi-tracked Kronos Quartet (times three) and vocalist Sufjan Stevens (times eight). Dessner himself appears as guitarist on Tour Eiffel, which was commissioned by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. This is exciting, visceral and at times deeply moving music, with a thorough awareness of the interplay…

Concerto Armonico is a period instrument ensemble, which like its director the harpsichordist Miklós Spányi, came out of Budapest’s Franz Liszt Academy, where it was formed in 1983. Joined here by co-founder Péter Szu˝ts and keyboardists Tamás Szekendy and Cristiano Holtz, it performs Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s three innovative works for two keyboards and orchestra. This is the 20th and final volume in a highly acclaimed survey of the complete keyboard concertos of CPE Bach (1714-88), and provides a fitting end to such an endeavor in this 300th birthday year of the composer. Throughout, the performances are first-rate, exhibiting the same energy and razor-sharp precision which characterizes those of previous volumes. The program, in which Márta Ábrahám leads an orchestra variously comprising strings, flutes, oboes, horns, trumpets and timpani, opens with one of the last works Bach wrote, the Concerto in E Flat for harpsichord and fortepiano (1788). Here Spányi uses a swell device to muffle his harpsichord so as not to overpower Szekendy’s silvery-toned 1798 Broadwood, and the results are magical. Though this is less a witty, sparkling interplay between two equals than a conversation that rises above the pleasant din of the orchestra and is occasionally interrupted by…

Richard Egarr sets out to push boundaries while staying within the confines of historically informed music-making. Here he’s got our limited concept of the symphony in his sights, and has put together a program that demonstrates the enormous diversity and rapid development of the genre from Handel to Haydn. It’s an instructive journey: already you can hear the germ of the symphony in the Sinfonia from Handel’s oratorio Saul (1738), while the Grande Simphonie No 7 by Franz Xavier Richter (c.1740) and Stamitz’s Sinfonia in D (c.1750) demonstrate the stylistic and technical revolutions that were taking place at the famed Mannheim Court at the time.  Mozart’s Symphony No 1, composed when he was just eight-years-old, reflects not only the influence of Mannheim but that of JC Bach; finally, one of Haydn’s masterpieces, the Symphony No 49 (La Passione) epitomises the Sturm und Drang style of sharply contrasting extremes of emotion, thus prefiguring Beethoven. The AAM are perfect advocates, their playing crisp and light yet virtuosic and given to extravagant gestures where the musical rhetoric demands it. This is most evident in the Mannheim works, where the loudest fortissimo and the quietest pianissimo are rendered with painterly skill amid a hail…

Rock meets classical as Perth explores music by Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, James Ledger and Andy Akiho.

Given its modest yet beguiling tone, it’s easy to forget the classical guitar is capable of painting a universe far beyond its actual sound-making capabilities. To fall under its spell is to enter a realm of ambiguity and suggestion; in other words, the classical guitar is the most poetic of instruments. So when 19th-century masters of the instrument Augustín Barrios, Francisco Tárrega, Caspar Joseph Mertz and the 20th-century composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco choose to pay homage to, respectively, Montevideo’s cathedral, Verdi’s opera La Traviata and the Alhambra, Schubert’s lieder and the music of Boccherini, there is no real paradox.  Even if you aren’t familiar with the source material, you have your imagination to fill in the gaps. This is music that succeeds on its own terms but also points to a richer domain that, thanks to evocative writing, is immediately accessible.  Of course, the quality of the interpretations must bear some of the responsibility for such a mysterious transference, and that’s where talented Austrian guitarist Armin Egger comes in. Whether it’s in Barrios’ melancholy, nostalgic waltzes and organ-evoking La catedral, Tárrega’s rippling Recuerdos de la Alhambra, Mertz’s virtuosic fantasy on The Flying Dutchman or Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s quirky evocation of a bygone era,…

Few recent piano recordings have given me as much pleasure as this one. Imagine that sense of relaxation, fun or reflection that one feels listening to an encore after a lengthy and often more serious piano recital. Then multiply it by 20, and you have Piers Lane Goes to Town. Of course it both is and it isn’t as simple as that. As the Queensland-born, London-based Lane writes in his engagingly-written booklet note, “Considering the scope of these short pieces (a selection of Lane’s most-often-played 20th- century encores), Australian composers feature more prominently than one might expect, partly because several works were written for me by down-under compatriots”. So this is a musical autobiography in more ways than one. Alan Lane may not have written his Toccata for Piers, but the fact he was the latter’s father counts for much, as does the fact that the music of Billy Mayerl “was a great favourite in the Lane household”. Anthony Doheny’s Toccata for Piers Lane was by contrast, and as the name suggests, expressly written for Lane, as was Robert Keane’s delightful yet slightly dangerous-sounding The Tiger Tango. Lane also suggests that he would be surprised “if even the most avid pianophile knew every piece on this disc”. However some…

Tedeschi’s new CD follows on from the success of his first recording, Gershwin and Me, and features the Rhapsody in Blue, the wonderful Preludes, arrangements from the Songbooks and Tedeschi’s own inspired take on Porgy and Bess. Elsewherere he’s joined by Australian jazz trumpeter James Morrison and vocalist Sarah McKenzie. With more arangements of Gershwin songs and pieces such as Promenade, Three-Quarter Blues and Impromptu in Two Keys, it’s a varied and attractive program. Gershwin’s music is able to effortlessly inhabit multiple worlds – blues, jazz, classical and so forth – while maintaining the highest standards of craftsmanship. Tedeschi by contrast is firmly of the classical world, while perfectly able to accommodate the rhythmic and harmonic nuances of Gershwin. This is evident right from the opening work, Promenade, which Tedeschi imbues with a jaunty insouciance; I also loved the sheer exuberance of Jazzbo Brown Blues and the expansiveness of I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise. If Morrison and McKenzie tend to steal the limelight when they appear, that’s more down to Tedeschi’s generosity as a collaborator. But it’s in the solo works that Tedeschi’s art is best savoured, and nowhere more so than in the solo version of Rhapsody in Blue. Here, Tedeschi, unencumbered by the orchestral accompaniment, really soars, An enjoyable…

Intimidated by the example of Beethoven’s late quartets, Brahms struggled for years before finally publishing his first two string quartets in 1873. By contrast, so inspired was he by the playing of the Meiningen Hofkapelle’s principal clarinettist Richard Mülfeld, whom he met in early 1891, that he wrote the Clarinet Quartet and Clarinet Trio in just a few weeks. Mülfeld and the Joachim Quartet premiered the Clarinet Quartet on December 12, 1891. It was an immediate hit. This beautiful new recording brings together the Clarinet Quintet and the A Minor String Quartet Op 51 No 2. It also brings together the Jerusalem Quartet, formed in 1993 and thanks to Musica Viva no stranger to Australian concert-goers, and that equally enthusiastic advocate for chamber music, Israeli clarinettist Sharon Kam. Excellent performances of the Clarinet Quintet abound. My personal favourites include Thea King with the Gabrieli Quartet on Hyperion and the Nash Ensemble on Wigmore Hall Live: both, true to the nature of the work, eschew any attempt to isolate the clarinet; it is instead effortlessly integrated into the string texture. Which is exactly what Kam does here, trusting individuality to timbre and tone while perfectly weighting volume and phrasing against the…

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Melbourne composer Stuart Greenbaum’s chamber works, like all the best art, is in the world but not of the world – qualities which are sympathetically brought out in these performances by one of New Zealand’s leading chamber ensembles, NZTrio.   Head of Composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium, Greenbaum has written opera, choral, orchestral, chamber and solo instrumental music. This new recording features eight works exploring the latter two genres from between 1999 and 2011. The title work, 800 Million Heartbeats, takes the nominal number of heartbeats in a human life as a metaphor for life’s journey. Falling by Degrees explores gravity and falling in seven miniatures. Equator Loops and Lunar Orbit are for solo piano and cello respectively, while The Lake and the Hinterland and Scarborough Variations combine both instruments. The Year Without A Summer takes the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora as its subject.   Greenbaum says his music “aims to evoke an atmosphere apart from the routine of modern life”. But by drawing on familiar styles such as blues, pop and jazz, his music celebrates modern life in all its forms. It simply jettisons the routine. Thus 800 Million Heartbeats tells the story of our lives through soaring string melodies singing over the steady pulse of piano figurations. In Falling by Degrees, ghostly harmonics, agitated pizzicatos…