Handel’s Serse of 1738 with its buffo elements and fast moving structure baffled the critics of the day who singularly failed to recognise Handel’s dramaturgical innovations; it was dismissed by some as a mere “ballad”opera and Charles Burney took him to task for reinstating the tragicomedic that had been banished from opera seria. Relying less on the static three-part da capo aria in favour of short snappy one-movement numbers it suits the light, nimble touch of Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company whose excellence in this field is a known quantity and the cast is ideal. Anna Stéphany is superb in the title pants-role, caressing the ear in moments of contemplation yet with sufficient metal in the voice to suggest the warrior king without going over the top and turning the character into a basket-case – her Se Bramante d’amar is a lesson in dramatic projection. Rosemary Joshua’s Romilda is her father’s child with nobility in the voice yet also a vulnerable femininity while her beau David Daniels is as strapping and heroic as a counter-tenor can manage. Thankfully the more comic characters are played relatively straight; Brindley Sherratt avoids conventional bluster as the soldier prince Ariodate, Hilary Summers…

  Monteverdi is celebrated for bringing opera to birth, but his extraordinary creativity also saw the gradual dissolving of the stylistic boundaries between sacred and secular music. Here we have a pleasantly varied sample of Monteverdi’s secular music, drawn from the later books of madrigals and some well known operatic items. Two of the items, the arresting Toccata from Orfeo and the vivacious Chiome d’oro from the Seventh Book of Madrigals, were ‘recycled’ as sacred pieces. One of the themes running through this selection is, as the booklet note puts it, “the sweet pains of love”. The most intense expressions of painful love are found in three laments. Lasciatemi morire, the only surviving music from the opera Arianna, was reworked as a five-part madrigal in which Arianna’s pain is intensified by some wonderful dissonances. A Dio, Roma from The Coronation of Poppea is movingly sung by Sarah Connolly while Lamento della Ninfa (one of the first laments over a descending bass) moves and impresses by gaining maximum impact from so little material. Charles Daniels sings Possente spirito, the famous tour de force from Orfeo with great agility and empathy, expertly accompanied by a phalanx of cornetts. The prologue from Orfeo…

Glamorous German violinist Julia Fischer looks like a thoroughly modern classical celebrity, but in recital her repertoire is in the grand tradition of the mid-20th century when programs never seemed complete without Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata, Ravel’s Tzigane and works by the subject of Fischer’s fifth Decca CD, the 19th-century Spanish showman Sarasate. These dazzling works, composed at a time when Sarasate rivalled Joachim as Europe’s finest violinist, make great showstoppers and encores, but what’s surprising is how satisfying they turn out to be in their own right. Beginning with a couple of Spanish dances, it’s apparent from the get-go how effortlessly the 30-year-old masters the technical challenges of works designed to leave jaws on floor. She sounds like she’s having fun, and why wouldn’t she, especially in Zigeunerweisen, whose czárdás rhythm allows Fischer and accompanist Milana Chernyavska to demonstrate how convincingly a German and a Ukrainian can perform Spanish music inspired by Hungarian gypsies. The highlight, though, is the Serenata Andaluza, whose opening raises expectations of Bizet’s Carmen wandering in, but then transforms into one of those million-miles- an-hour extravaganzas of the kind that prompted George Bernard Shaw to say Sarasate’s music “left criticism gasping miles behind him”. Amen…

  Recorded live in January 2012, this recital from London’s legendary chamber music venue, The Wigmore Hall, contains some beautiful playing; the intimacy of the performances are not just down to the remarkable collaboration between these two fine artists, but are also due to the excellent acoustics of the hall itself. Unlike so many modern recordings, the music doesn’t sound as if it were being played in a large bathroom. The details are as clear as a bell, and the sound is simply gorgeous. The “lullabies to my sorrows”, was how Brahms melancholically described his set of three intermezzi, opus 109. They are quiet, introspective works and perfectly written in his late romantic style. In this concert, this is the pianist’s solo outing and she plays the music beautifully but with some detachment. Not typical Brahms played in the way that we usually expect. The Sonata for Cello and Piano No 1 is a much more robust and substantial work, ranging over a wide, romantic canvas and is here grandly performed by both soloists. The opening movement of Bach’s Pastoral in F is an arrangement of an organ piece and thought to have been written around 1720 in Leipzig. This arrangement…

  There aren’t many pianists with the Beethoven pedigree of Rudolf Buchbinder. Now in his mid-60s, the former wunderkind who entered the Vienna Hochschule at age 5 has recorded two cycles of both sonatas and concertos, this most recent live set of concertos appearing on DVD two years ago to enthusiastic reviews. If Buchbinder in the studio can be a little studied, these live performances are sparked with more life. Anything but a ‘personality’ player, you sense Buchbinder’s much happier poring over Beethoven’s original markings rather than laying on the showmanship and emotion for excitable fans. And instead of the luscious warm string sounds that Barenboim unleashes in the same repertoire, Buchbinder goes instead for the intimacy and almost chamber-music textures of a smaller band. This is both a strength and a weakness. It’s a very ‘musicianly’ approach and one that will be appreciated by all who like their Beethoven affectation-free, interpreted with intelligence and good taste. But the live recorded sound to some ears will be less than scintillating, adding a dourness that the performances themselves, suitably animated in the First, lyrical in the Third and Fourth, and imposing in the Emperor, don’t actually possess. This is late-night Beethoven, to be……

Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös has plenty of operatic experience having produced versions of Angels in America and Chekov’s Three Sisters. His 2008 setting of a short story by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, then, might seem to promise more, but despite this excellent Glyndebourne cast recording giving it every opportunity to land, it remains peculiarly elusive and, for all it’s South American colour, a slightly drab affair. The story concerns the increasingly obsessive love of a priest for a 12-year-old girl suspected of contracting rabies after being bitten by a dog. Oddly, her age appears not to be an issue here, and sung by the capable Allison Bell, she simply comes across as a young woman – albeit one given to a good old scream now and again. There’s a greater tension between the world of the local ‘natives’, accused by the Catholic hierarchy of superstition, and the harsh attempts by the Bishop and Abbess to exorcise Sierva’s ‘demon’. Perhaps the problem is that the short story is just that – short. The characters lack background and relationships are sketchy. The libretto is skillfully adapted, but too often the score seems to drift along when it should seize the dramatic possibilities. Many…

Dating from the 1730s, Bach’s four short Mass settings are the red-headed stepchildren of his choral output. Several Bach scholars have actively belittled them as “mindless” (Philipp Spitta in the 19th century) and “quite nonsensical” (Albert Schweitzer). Moreover, they contain abundant recycling of cantata movements not always perfectly suited to their new Latin words. Still, now that they have attracted such significant directors as Konrad Junghänel (Harmonia Mundi) and Philippe Herreweghe (Virgin Classics), competition in this repertoire is quite tough. Harry Christophers uses just two voices per part, a practice inherently neither good nor bad. In churches, even one-voice-per-part choirs can often convey unexpected vigour. Yet too frequently in a recording context, a tiny choir necessitates damping down the orchestral contribution, neutralising genuine drama, as opposed to mere indiscriminate briskness. So here. Junghänel, with forces comparable in size, obtains a spectrum of vocal and instrumental colours to which Christophers seems indifferent, allowing his musicians, in comparison with these impressive rival versions, to sound unduly genteel. The appropriately robust horn-players briefly heard in BWV233 appear to have wandered in from a different and more impassioned performance.  Elsewhere, one might as well be listening to a robust Vivaldi opera as to anything…

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,…

Joe Chindamo is a jazz pianist with the chops of a Russian virtuoso; Zoë Black is a versatile classical fiddler who has played with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, inter alia.

This disc of mid-20th Century American piano concertos is a polished affair. Wang’s brilliant pianism is infectious and appropriately lyrical for the slow movement of Barber’s concerto. The Scottish orchestra under Peter Oundjian brings power to their role in the proceedings. Chandos maintains its usual high standard. And that should be it – but it isn’t.  The problem concerns the two jazz-influenced pieces. Simply put, Wang doesn’t swing. To give an example, the piano licks in the third movement of the Gershwin are given a scherzando treatment: impressively achieved, but not what Gershwin was getting at. Underneath the Lisztian decoration is a streetwise toughness that eludes these musicians. Copland’s early concerto is one of the few where he referenced 1920s jazz. Again, Wang does not know what to make of this element. Missing the music’s louche cheekiness, she simply sounds awkward. To hear what is missing, turn to Copland and Bernstein (Sony).  To rediscover Gershwin’s brash cityscape, try Earl Wild with the Boston Pops, or a 1954 Decca recording by Julius Katchen with Mantovani and His Orchestra (!), which is even more idiomatic. Katchen squeezes out every last drop of ragtime (as does Wild). And, fine as Wang and Oundjian are in…

This release is a sequel to the earlier Decca Sound box set. It covers the years of Decca’s analogue “Full Frequency Range Recording”, starting with the company’s earliest stereo recordings from 1954 –Ansermet conducting the Suisse Romande Orchestra in music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Balakirev and Liadov – and finishing in 1980 just prior to the advent of digital recording, with Dutoit conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in tone poems by Saint-Saëns. The bonus CD gives us the Ansermet Russian program in its original mono, for comparative purposes. Unlike the earlier box, this is not presented as a best performance collection; rather, it is designed to showcase the peak of Decca’s sound quality over those analogue decades. And indeed it does: the sound of Fistoulari’s highlights from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake holds up stunningly (recorded with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1961), not to mention Solti’s visceral Mahler Resurrection Symphony with Heather Harper, Helen Watts and the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1966. Sometimes the sound is of its time. When Decca producers recorded opera in the late 1950s and early 1960s they preferred a cavernous space with the voices set back  – an opera house acoustic – yet the clarity and presence…

How to make a spectacle out of Wagner’s last opera Parsifal? There’s the rub. Belgian company La Monnaie called on Italian avant-garde theatre director Romeo Castelluci to lend his vision to this four-hour production. The result is a Kundry dressed in white anorak and gumboots, lashings of nudity and bondage and an albino python, said by Castelluci to represent Wagner’s music, and whose ‘venom’ might be a cure. (Herpetologist’s note: Pythons are not venomous). There’s also a German shepherd dog which occasionally makes an appearance like Inspector Rex on a case. Also in the mix are 300 extras and explicit scenes in the second act where Klingsor’s castle is a cross between an S&M parlour and a gynaecologist’s consulting room. It all looks like a Pilates class gone horribly wrong. Castellucci is known for shocking audiences with violence, nudity and, on occasions, steaming piles of excrement. This was his first operatic venture. It’s difficult to imagine how he would follow this up if invited. The cast, orchestra and chorus are all solid if not exceptional. But then it can’t be easy competing with 300 extras, a dog, a snake and topless dancers with white beehive wigs. The liner notes say…