Music lovers over 50 will recall the Ace of Clubs label: a series of reissues of mono recordings from the 1950s. They sold in Australia for $2.95, enticingly cheaper than full price stereo LPs at $5.95. The latest in a series of Decca Sound boxes, delving into the old Decca catalogue, brings back many of those recordings, encased in reproductions of the original sleeves and with bonus tracks to take each CD beyond 70 minutes.  Decca’s Full Frequency Range sound quality was always a feature and is enhanced in the digital remastering, although violin sections are occasionally toppy. For instance, you have to listen through the harsh string sound of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro to appreciate the bracing vitality of Anthony Collins’s performance. His Falstaff has no such caveat: it sounds great and is enthralling from beginning to end. Sadly there is too much here to cover in a short review. Conductors include stalwarts like Ansermet, Argenta, Boult, Martinon, Fistoulari, Erich Kleiber (beautifully unaffected in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony), Van Beinum, and the earliest discs by Solti: a riveting Bartók Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and a lively Haydn Symphony No 100. Unique and celebrated recordings abound: Britten’s Diversions with…

This recording of the complete Daphnis et Chloé came after a run of stage performances at the Bastille last year and it is a shame the production wasn’t filmed as we need a decent staging on DVD. In that context Jordan’s reading would be more satisfying than this audio only account. The needs of choreography have straight-jacketed his interpretation and while some may enjoy its straightforward, unfussy manner, for many it will come across as bland and paradoxically un-theatrical. Limpid textures and restraint are a pleasure in themselves, but the lack of thrust and dramatic gesture stops the performance from taking flight. That marvellous opening sequence of mounting voluptuousness should make senses tingle but fails to arouse. Dorcon’s dance is hardly grotesque, and the mocking laughter is half-hearted. The pirate sequences are way too careful. The Bacchanale never quite takes off. The burbling brook at Daybreak is lovingly articulated though, and one does get a frisson with an orgasmic Sunrise. Similar issues plague La Valse. Wonderful moments are glossed over, the opening devoid of mystery, the final breakdown lacks abandon. There are fine textures, but I wish Jordan would just cut loose. Orchestral playing is fine but not outstanding. Recorded…

Where would music be without femmes fatales? In presenting Geminiani’s score for the 1754 pantomime The Enchanted Forest, Les Passions de l’Ame (a Swiss baroque ensemble based in Bern) realise that in the absence of any visual element this instrumental music, however well played, would lack a certain something. How sensible then to programme a cantata by Handel on the same subject (namely from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata). Enter our temptress, Armida. This scarlet woman bewitches a crusader, Rinaldo, and holds him in thrall to her charms. Rinaldo’s comrades break the witch’s spell and the abandoned Armida is left to lament her fate, even as she tries to win back her beloved with magic and womanly wiles. The clear, stylish singing of soprano Robin Johannsen provides a welcome contrast to the relatively long stretches of Geminiani’s rather mannered concerti grossi, especially given the variety of moods encapsulated in Handel’s cantata. Her rage aria, Venti, fermate, sì, is an excellent contrast to the more resigned final aria. Les Passions de l’Ame play with dedication and establish their credentials with a fiery account of Geminiani’s own arrangement of Corelli’s take on La Follia. It’s a pity that the rest of Geminiani’s music…

A miniature EP by Joe Twist: three works about ‘dance’; only 23 minutes. As in most of Twist’s music, allusions to popular culture are abundant. Dancing With Somebody – a string quartet – celebrates the persona (with some musical quotations) of pop diva Whitney Houston. Twist sets rhythmic buoyancy against a dark struggle. A subversive structure plays out: patterns are set up, then disturbed (though not repeated!), all aided by first-rate playing from the Sydney-based Acacia Quartet. In I Dance Myself to Sleep, Twist looks to female characters from films such as Superman and Star Wars. Am I listening to contemporary music for the concert hall or cheap bar music? (I ask that with admiration: Twist squeezes a familiar genre into something weirdly beautiful). Pianist Sally Whitwell is a gorgeous co-conspirator in Twist’s ironic game. The crystalline sound of quartet and piano jars with the overly-sampled Gorilla, a film score. A couple on a weekend away meet an alluring woman and a ritualistic dance takes place. I imagined some sort of sacramental physical theatre but this has too much sampled music masquerading as live instruments. The fade-out at the end was too obvious for what was (so far) an exciting…

In the ballet world, Adam’s Giselle is almost as often performed as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. However on the concert stage, it hasn’t achieved the same popularity as its Russian cousins. Despite the efforts of this beautiful recording by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, expertly led by Nicolette Fraillon, it’s not hard to understand why. Adam’s buoyant melodies aren’t as charming as those in a Strauss waltz and there isn’t the same melodrama as you hear in Tchaikovsky’s famous ballets. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra with Fraillon at the helm do play Adam’s score stylishly and without fault, once again proving they are one of Australia’s most versatile orchestras. Their balance in the romantic orchestration has wonderful depth and is consistently lush. The frequent woodwind details are delightfully delivered, notably the interchanging flute and clarinet solos. Giselle and Albrecht’s Pas de Deux reveals the strength of individual players, with all the soloists playing with poise, especially the opening cellist. This disc is marketed toward the dance student, with the inclusion of ten alternative dance solos at varying tempi designed to suit differences in choreography or a dancer’s individual technique. If you are a fan of Adam’s music, or you are a…

Far from hinting at the avant garde orchestral works to come, Charles Ives’ symphonic debut could almost have been penned by Dvorˇák with Brahms and Tchaikovsky looking over his shoulder. Ives had heard the New York premiere of the New World Symphony and he paid it more than a passing nod, almost channelling the famous Largo (including cor anglais). This engaging work, written when he was still at Yale, shows the insurance salesman-cum-composer was no mere hobbyist. It includes a highly competent fugue in the Scherzo, engaging melodies and skilful use of orchestral palette. The five-movement Second Symphony, championed by Bernstein, is more characteristic with snatches of Stephen Foster’s Camptown Races and American hymns vying with quotes from Beethoven, Brahms, Bach and Wagner. There’s a hint of what was to come in the final bars where it ends on an abrupt, comical key change – a musical thumbing of the nose? The work was applauded at its premiere although Ives is said to have spat at its reception. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra are clearly relishing their collaboration with Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis judging from the playing in both works. Phrasing and tempi are excellent and technically they are up there with overseas orchestras. Production from Chandos is exemplary….

Isserlis seems incapable of playing a dud note, let alone giving a dud performance.

Last month we reviewed the 1954 Rigoletto, not an opera one normally associates with the thrilling tenor, but this recording of Verdi’s Otello from the same year on Decca’s budget Eloquence label features Mario del Monaco in a role which fits him like a glove and which he made very much his own in the 1950s and ‘60s. And it pairs him with Tebaldi as Desdemona. You can tell straight away, despite the obvious drawbacks of a mono recording, exactly why this partnership set the opera world alight for two decades. Their musical chemistry is still potent 60 years on. Alberto Erede conducts the magnificent Accademia di Santa Cecilia with dramatic verve and gusto. Italian baritone Aldo Protti, so compelling as Rigoletto on the companion disc, is equally impressive as the wilily conniving Iago, while tenor Piero de Palma (Cassio) and mezzo Luisa Ribachi (Emilia) give great support. But this is all about Tebaldi and Del Monaco. They had recorded Aida two years earlier so their partnership was well established, but the Decca executives must have been rubbing their hands with glee to have found such a magnificent double act whose true worth would flower with the emergence of stereo…

Editor’s Choice, Vocal & Choral – November 2015 “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded survived” – the old schoolroom rhyme is still a good way of recalling the fate of the six colourful women who married Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn, the second wife and the first to get the chop (literally) had quite an interesting life before she came to Henry’s attention. As a maid of honour to Margaret of Austria, a great musical patron, then in the French court of Henry’s sister, Mary and later in that of her stepdaughter, Queen Claude, Anne would have been exposed to a wide variety of musical styles, as well as being given ample opportunity to develop her own musical talents. All the more intriguing then, is a music book kept in London’s Royal College of Music that bears her name. It contains 42 works, both sacred and secular, by a variety of composers. Some are smaller works destined for domestic or devotional settings, while others are grander, liturgical works. David Skinner and his vocal consort (named after the Tudor singer, composer, music copyist and political informant, Petrus Alamire) offer a generous sampling of the book’s diverse contents. What is immediately noticeable is the…

This programme has been cleverly crafted around the world premiere recording of Sir James MacMillan’s Oboe Concerto performed by its dedicatee Nicholas Daniel with the composer at the helm. It is a bold virtuosic work that should prove popular with both players and audiences.  The breezy first movement, a bustling affair with the soloist goaded on to challenging passage-work by startling effects in the orchestra, contrasts starkly with the following Largo based on material from a earlier composition In Angustiis (a post-9/11 lament for solo oboe). It juxtaposes periods of keening sorrow with outbursts of rage, while stretching the expressive possibilities of the instrument just about as far as it can go. The Finale is forthright and playful, opening with a demented parody of serialist pretensions before veering off in unexpected poly-stylistic directions – although some of its jokes are a little too wacky for its own good.  The disc opens with Vaughan William’s pastoral idyll with the soloist directing a performance that should serve as a top recommendation for this under-recorded gem. The Britten Sinfonia’s limpid strings conjure moments of heart-stopping beauty such as the hushed rapture at the close of the first movement. Daniel’s slender but focused tone is quintessentially British and…

How extraordinary, when you think about it, is Guillaume Tell in the career of Gioacchino Rossini? At the age of 37, at the very height of his powers, he writes his longest, grandest, and probably his greatest French opera, only to then fall silent for decades except for a few naughty piano works and the odd bon mot. He must have known (or feared) that he could do no better and, listening to it all over again, his final opera is a very fine thing indeed. This outing comes from the admirable and ambitious annual Rossini Festival in Pesaro, and if there’s one thing they invariably do well it’s pick a cast. I really can’t imagine a better sung bit of bel canto than this. Add to that a magnificently detailed reading of the score, plus a thoughtful production, and this is nigh on four hours of operatic heaven. Graham Vick’s neatly politicised staging shifts the action from late medieval times to the Swiss ‘Downton Abbey’ era, focusing on the class oppression that was running its course round about then rather than on the stark nationalism of the original. Against a bleak, white set, the drama is played out effectively…

Anne Sofie von Otter has crossed more genre boundaries than most and with effortless ease, so when DG marked her 60th birthday by asking her to pick her best 10 albums it was no surprise that she would come up with this stunner. The set, branded “10 Classic Albums”, lives up to the name. We get lavish helpings of Brahms, French chansons, late-Romantic lieder and Scandinavian songs alongside von Otter’s brilliant collaboration with Elvis Costello, and we are given a bonus with her 1997 arias from Handel’s Ariodante, her first collaboration with Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre. They also collaborated on an all-Offenbach album, done with wit and elan and even if it’s not your aperitif of choice von Otter’s ability to inhabit the music will impress you. English conductor John Eliot Gardiner is another regular partner and their 1994 Kurt Weill tribute, Speak Low, represented another outstanding departure. Two further jewels in the set are her Baroque ventures with Reinhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Köln, Lamenti and (my favourite) Handel’s Marian Cantatas. But it is her 30-year association with fellow Swede, pianist Bengt Forsberg, which is the beating heart here. Their broad musical landscape takes in Cécile Chaminade’s…