If there existed a prize for the World-Famous Composer Whom We Falsely Supposed We Knew, Gounod would win it at a canter. Take away Faust, the Funeral March for a Marionette (immortalised by Alfred Hitchcock), the Bach-derived Ave Maria, and how much Gounod have most of us heard? Singularly little. Even his Messe Solennelle and O Divine Redeemer, beloved during the early 20th century, have largely faded from general consciousness. Yet never fear, Hyperion is here, giving us not just utterly obscure Gounod pieces but an utterly obscure instrument: the pedal-piano (usually called pédalier in France and Pedalflügel in Germany), which once inspired enthusiasm in Schumann, Alkan, and Franck. Equipped with an organ-style pedal-board as well as standard piano keys, the pédalier emerged recently on an Olivier Latry disc where the tinny, clattering, bar-room sound largely defeated this reviewer. Hyperion’s pédalier has a much more attractive tone, and incorporates two Steinway grand pianos – the annotations explain the Rube-Goldberg-like procedures involved – to produce handsome results. Compared with a conventional piano, the timbre remains on the dry side. Nevertheless the outcome proves unfailingly musical, which chez Latry it assuredly was not.  No-one would credit this repertoire with consistent brow-furrowing profundity,…

  After just two instalments in his projected seven-opera Mozart cycle, Rolando Villazón has taken a premature diversion a collection of obscure Mozart concert arias that he found in a Munich music shop. As he’s demonstrated already in Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni, Villazón is a persuasive Mozart advocate, but he needs all that skill and enthusiasm to make this grab-bag of juvenilia, rejects and odd-jobs hold together. The opening of the aria Aura che intorno spiri must be one of the greatest opening phrases in all Mozart, but the sublimity is intermittent. Many arias hint at genius and then faff about in a stop-start demonstration of genius almost at work. The most intriguing are Con ossequio, con rispetto and La spoco deluso, where one could speculate that Rossini built his career out of Mozart’s reject bin. The earliest aria, Va, dal furor portata, is gob-smacking when judged by the standards of 9-year-old composers, but compared with the Mozart of 20 years later, it’s scarcely must-have. Just how far Mozart progressed during the intervening period is demonstrated in the only German language inclusion, Musst ich auch durch taussend Drachen, sounding so much more mature and dramatic in intent, and…

    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…

Following his homage to the people’s tenor Maria Lanza, it makes sense for Calleja to come up with a recital ranging from Leoncavallo and Tosti to Morricone and Edith Piaf. Although there are songs in no less than six languages, the Maltese tenor is obviously most at home in his mother tongue, Italian. Many critics have commented on the ‘golden-age’ quality of his voice, his ease of production and his wish to remain a man of the people. However for all of the ease and honeyed legato, one often yearns for geater involvement with the text. One also wishes more care had been taken in the choice of repertoire and the lush orchestrations. The sheer beauty of the voice is almost enough to justify Time to Say Goodbye but the rounded Italianate vowels are too much for as simple a tune as You Raise Me Up. Similarly Piaf’s La Vie en Rose remains an odd choice as it is so strongly associated with the feminine (though here his French vowels are far more agreeably idiomatic). Equally odd is the vocal take on the Adagio from Rodrigo’s Concerto De Aranjuez though it’s nice to hear Calleja in Spanish. His German and…

Given the period instruments this may not be the definite recording of Beethoven’s intimate music for cello, but it’s certainly up there with the likes of Fournier and Rostropovich.

This set contains recordings made between 1993 and 1996 and includes most of the major orchestral works by the short-lived late Romantic Max Reger (1873-1916). Missing are the Violin Concerto, the Hiller Variations and the early Sinfonietta. However, two sets of variations on themes by Mozart and Beethoven are included, each closing with a monumental fugue. Reger was renowned as an organist, and his orchestration is conceived in organ terms: sections predominate rather than individual instrumental colours. Segerstam’s disciplined and refined performances, spaciously recorded, emphasise this. The conductor is demonstrably attuned to Reger’s style in two expressionistic works. The first is virtually a single-movement symphony, entitled Symphonic Prologue to a Tragedy (1908); the second, a series of tone-pictures inspired by paintings by Böcklin. With his restless chromatic sequences, Reger sometimes takes so long getting to the point that you wonder if there is any point at all. This certainly applies to the 45-minute Piano Concerto of 1910, which is Brahms on steroids. It demands musicians who revel in larger-than-life romantic gestures. Pianist Love Derwinger understands this, and makes a more convincing case for the work than the emotionally detached Marc-André Hamelin on a recent Hyperion disc. This is good value…

Ray Chen’s rise to fame since winning the Menuhin competition in 2008 has been meteoric and with a musical endorsement from Maxim Vengerov and a sartorial deal with Giorgio Armani, he’s sounding and looking like the full classical celebrity package. This sparkling Mozart collaboration will only enhance the Taiwanese-born, Brisbane-raised violinist’s formidable reputation. In Mozart’s two concertos, he checks-in his fashion-blogs and Italian Vogue clothes-horse poses at the studio door, and delivers everything that one could want, two performances that sing and play and dance with effortless style and real joy. True, everything in the mix is weighted toward the soloist, and the solo wind players of Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra might feel gipped that they sound like they’re playing out-the-corridor-and-down-the-steps, but when Chen simply caresses the openings to those heavenly slow movements, no one’s going to care about the support act. Here’s true star-power – one of those recordings that grips you and makes you happy, even when Chen’s own cadenzas sound more ‘fresh’ than convincing. Eschenbach then turns accompanist in a less ‘present’ recording but equally fine performance of the Violin Sonata in A, K305, a foretaste of what can be expected when Chen tours Australia with Timothy…

Mozart is undoubtedly the most well known composer to have been a freemason, but many others have been devoted to “the Craft” including Boyce, Haydn, Liszt and even Irving Berlin. Sibelius’s involvement dates from early 1922, but it was not until 1927 that his Masonic music appeared in its first published form.  Consisting of processionals, hymns and songs, these short pieces are a mixture of the solemnity and brotherly love that would have been celebrated in meetings of the lodge. Within the limitations of this gebrauchmusik Sibelius fashions some catchy tunes, notably the song Whosoever hath a love and the Ode to Fraternity. There is also an imposing funeral march and an arrangement of the Finlandia hymn for male chorus. The music is presented first in its original form with organ accompaniment. A shorter selection also appears in an orchestral arrangement by Jaakko Kuusisto. His masterly way with these scores lifts the music into another realm, in particular the funeral march, which takes on an imposing grandeur reminiscent of the composer’s mature symphonic style. The Lahti Symphony plays with insight and commitment. Mika Pohjonen’s light, well-rounded tenor serves the orchestral version well, while Hannu Jurmu’s instrument sounds a little forced…

Three of Verdi’s finest for around $40 is good value by most people’s reckoning and this BelAir set would make a welcome inclusion in any opera fan’s library. French soprano Mireille Delunsch is incandescent as the dying Violetta in Peter Mussbach’s noir 2003 Aix Festival La Traviata. Everyone is dressed in black while the blonde heroine palpitates in sequined white like Marilyn Monroe (or is it Catherine Deneuve?). Matthew Polenzani is impressive as Alfredo, sweet toned and secure in the big moments.   Dmitri Tcherniakov’s 2009 Macbeth at L’Opera National de Paris is the standout of this collection. The treatment is simply breathtaking, with a clever use of sets. The cast is top-notch: Greek baritone Dmitris Tilakos is totally convincing and Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana sings powerfully and beautifully, descending into bloody madness looking like a deranged Dawn French. The chorus are superb and the great scene in the fourth act where the displaced Scots are shattered by war evokes chilling footage of refugees. Nicolas Joel’s 2007 Zurich Opera production of Aida, on the other hand, evokes the flag-waving of empire. Nina Stemme makes a compelling Aida. Salvatore Licitra, whose death from a brain haemorrhage in 2011 cut short a…

Michael Kieran Harvey is one of Australia’s great pianists, his virtuoso technique evident in the most challenging pieces imaginable.

In the 1920s, Paul Hindemith was well and truly aboard the Modernist bandwagon, writing “shocking” absurdist operas employing bitonal harmony and even jazz. His violin sonatas, however, bypassed all this. His first two appeared in 1919 and 1920, predating his iconoclastic period, while the later sonatas date from 1935 and 1939, by which time he had left youthful hijinks behind.  Though Brahms would have found them mystifying, in the early works Hindemith breathes the same air as the older master. No 2 gets a strong performance from German violinist Tanja Becker-Bender and her Hungarian partner Péter Nagy. They are thoroughly inside the idiom, capturing the slightly lugubrious atmosphere of the slow movement. They also show fine rapport in the later C Major Sonata, when Becker-Benda lightens her tone for the fleeting scale passages at the close of the Langsam movement.Elsewhere they can turn abrasive – Hindemith’s music doesn’t need help to sound tough – and at forte Becker-Bender’s tone becomes wiry in the upper register.  Recent competition in Op 11 No 1 and the two later sonatas comes from Frank Peter Zimmermann on BIS. His tone is easier on the ear, and his musicianship (and that of his pianist Enrico…

Some of the hottest young properties in classical music perform Rachmaninov and Prokofiev.