★★★★☆ Two legends of the art song shine in a rare Australian appearance. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

After earlier Vivaldi and Handel recitals with the Venice Baroque Orchestra and Andrea Marcon, it’s back to the Baroque for Czech mezzo Magdalena Kožená, who again teams up with Marcon for a programme devoted to the music of one of Kožená’s teenage crushes: Claudio Monteverdi. Apparently Kožená was just 16 years old when she co-founded her own early music ensemble to perform the Mantuan master’s music. So this recording is a homecoming of sorts, and if Kožená is nowadays more associated with Romantic repertoire you need only look to the complex, extravagant and emotionally charged music and lyrics of these madrigals and opera excerpts to see how there’s not really that much of a leap between Monteverdi and Mahler. Of course, there’s also a lot more scope for improvisation in Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, and therefore more legitimate opportunities for the performer to stamp their own personality on the score. This heightens rather than diminishes the music’s emotional impact. There is also more room to ‘orchestrate’ in the sense of which instrumental colours to include; here, La Cetra comprises strings, a cornett, lutes, guitar, psaltery, harpsichord, organ and percussion. Thus the opening Zefiro torna, e di soave accenti… Continue reading…

★★★★☆ It’s on for young and old in this hilarious update of Bizet’s rarely-performed opera buffa. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

As Ilja Stephan writes in her informative booklet note to this exquisite new release from French period instrument ensemble L’Arpeggiata, Francesco Cavalli “rode the crest of Venetian opera’s wave”. This full-time church musician composed 40 operas on the side and made a fortune in the process (though a prudent marriage to a rich widow also helped). The programme offers up a selection of arias and instrumental works from six Cavalli’s works – L’Ormindo, Il Giasone, La Rosinda, L’Artemisia, La Didone, L’Eliogabalo and the famous La Calisto – plus instrumental works by contemporaries Kapsperger and Falconieri. As Stephan points out, “the poetic text was a literary work of art in its own right” and Cavalli was lucky to have the talents of such masters as Giovanni Francesco Busenello (who furnished Monteverdi with the libretto for L’Incoronazione di Poppea). In her usual imaginative fashion, Christina Pluhar, directing from harp or theorbo, has filled out the skeletal scores by employing a rich array of instruments including lutes, harps, psalteries, percussion and a harpsichord and chamber organ. And if sopranos Nuria Rial and Hana Blažíková dazzle with their pure, sensuous tones and expressive, lightly virtuosic… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per…

Recording of the Month – May 2016 The title of Swedish clarinettist Martin Fröst’s Sony Classical debut says it all while implying so much more. Growing out of a live music project Fröst was already working on in Stockholm, Roots is an entirely organic listening experience, resembling (not so much contemplating) an ancient, solitary tree but strolling through a fragrant garden where a profusion of different plants brings forth flowers and fruits in eclectic abundance. Apart from Crusell’s famous Introduction and Variations on a Swedish Air and specially commissioned works by Anders Hillborg, the rest of the music here has undergone multiple metamorphoses, whether through transcription, arrangement, variation, improvisation or a new setting. Unfolding chronologically through time and space, the programme seamlessly connects each work by avoiding spaces between tracks; implicit is the invitation to find further connections in a shared heritage of dance and song, sacred ritual and secular entertainment, as well as folk and art music. Roots opens gently with Hildegard of Bingen, Fröst’s solo clarinet gliding between declamation and song before choir and orchestra enter almost surreptitiously; the following presto from a Telemann concerto originally for recorder and flute thus feels like a rude… Continue reading Get…

I’m not sure Charles-Marie Widor would have liked to be remembered simply as the man whose Toccata provides happy couples with the second most popular wedding recessional in history. But there’s not much danger of that with organists the calibre of UK-born Joseph Nolan (currently Organist and Master of the Choristers at St George’s Cathedral, Perth) keeping the sacred flame burning. Nolan here offers the first fruits of seven nocturnal recording sessions in a row, during which he put down all ten of Widor’s organ symphonies at the console of the superb four-manual, 60-stop, 4426-pipe Cavaillé-Coll organ of La Madeleine, Paris. The first two symphonies of Widor’s Opus 42 are grandly Romantic, five-movement behemoths that balance huge multicoloured edifices of devilish complexity with softer-lit landscapes populated by angelic choirs of varying dimensions. Nolan hovers over all like some musical demiurge, fleet of feet and fingers as he negotiates the massive chords and filigree passagework of faster movements such as the closing Vivace of Symphony No 6; thoughtful and sensitive yet smouldering with creative tension in slower movements such as the multi-faceted Andantino quasi allegretto and mellifluous Fifth Symphony Adagio. And “that” Toccata, with which the Fifth… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Orchestral Editor’s Choice, December 2013 Those of you who still haven’t cottoned onto the idea that Widor wrote a hell of a lot of brilliant organ music, most of it far superior to that Toccata, really need to hear this third volume in UK-born Perth-based organist Joseph Nolan’s recordings of Widor’s ten organ symphonies, part of his traversal of the composer’s complete works for organ. Like the previous two highly acclaimed volumes, this one’s been recorded on the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ of La Madeleine, Paris. Cavaillé-Coll was a friend of Widor’s and the composer’s music is inextricably linked to his instruments, which Widor played throughout his career. The four organ symphonies which comprise Opus 13 were first published in 1872 and later dedicated to Cavaillé-Coll. Taken together, the Symphony No 3 in E Minor and the Symphony No 4 in F Minor form a contrasting diptych, the more overt romanticism of the first contrasting with the neo-Baroque qualities of the second. Both however are equally imbued with delicacy and drama – qualities that are brought to the fore by Nolan with such nuance and insight that you feel you learn more about Widor by listening to these… Continue reading Get…

★★★★☆ New WASO concertmaster’s solo debut with the orchestra is a thing of beauty. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout’s traversal of Mozart’s complete keyboard music is fast becoming one of the most significant recording projects of the 21st century, combining as it does the best contemporary thinking on historical performance practice with an individual and refined musical sensibility. No stranger to Australian audiences, Bezuidenhout is equally at home in an orchestral or solo instrumental context; he is also as much at home with the improvisatory aspects of historical performance as other fortepianists such as Robert Levin and the great Malcolm Bilson. These factors combine to enliven Bezuidenhout’s interpretations in both a colouristic and decorative sense. Even non-specialists will be left utterly convinced of his total fluency in the musical language of the 18th century. And how lovely to open with the deceptively simple C Major Sonata, K545, so familiar to generations of piano students and yet so elegant and ingenious in its writing. Here, Bezuidenhout’s delicate phrasing, subtle balancing of voices and charming embellishments prepare the listener for what is to come, not only in other familiar works such as the piano sonatas K280, K279 and K576, but some preludes, a neo-baroque dance suite, a… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

Mozart’s two-act serenata Il Re Pastore was written in 1775 in response to a commission by the Archbishop of Salzburg. Metastasio’s libretto, based on a Torquato Tasso play, tells the story of Alexander the Great’s attempts at diplomatic matchmaking after his defeat of Strato, tyrant of the Phoenician city of Sidon. Alessandro (John Mark Ainsley) finds the true heir to the throne of Sidon in lowly shepherd Aminta (Sarah Fox), brought up in ignorance of his royal lineage. He and Elisa (Ailish Tynan) are in love, but Alessandro is unaware of this and tries to marry Aminta to Strato’s daughter, Tamiri (Anna Devin), who in turn is in love with nobleman Agenore (Benjamin Hulett). Confusion ensues, after which Alessandro cuts this particular Gordian Knot by making Aminta and Elisa rulers of Sidon and giving Agenore and Tamiri another kingdom to rule over. This fourth volume in Classical Opera’s planned complete survey of Mozart’s operas is every bit as terrific as the first three, with dramatically fulsome singing from all five soloists. Aminta’s famous arias Aer Tranquillo and L’Amerò are of course particular highlights, while Ainsley’s Si Spande al Sole in Faccia shows he’s lost none of the… Continue reading Get…

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.