A delicious serving of guitar favourites minus the cheese.

An intoxicating recreation of a Cromwellian pub session.

Rare 19th-century piano works in performances of rare beauty.

Erin Helyard’s superlative Handel certainly hits the musical sweet spot.

One of the largest collections of Dutch masters to ever leave Amsterdam holds up a mirror to our own lives today.

The cult of courtly love revisited in exquisite performances.

Joseph Nolan brings his monumental Widow series to the gentlest of ends.

WASO’s Louise McKay has devised a digital platform that allows you to book and enjoy music in the comfort of your home. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

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…