Israeli conductor Asher Fisch is no stranger to our shores, being particularly associated with the West Australia and Adelaide symphony orchestras. A generous helping of his landmark 2004 recording of Richard Wagner’s Ring in Adelaide was recently re-released by Melba Recordings, and Daniel Barenboim’s former conducting protégé features in a new release from that prestige label, albeit as a pianist, performing some of Franz Liszt’s paraphrases from five of Wagner’s operas. As a bonus on this excellent and fascinating disc, Fisch performs three rare, short piano pieces Wagner wrote as thankyous to friends and patrons.   Liszt started championing his future son-in-law in Weimar in the 1840s where he conducted Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. He wrote 14 paraphrases of Wagner excerpts, with varying degrees of fidelity, over the years before the pair famously fell out over Wagner’s affair and subsequent marriage to Liszt’s already-married daughter Cosima.   One can only guess what Wagner must have thought of the liberties “my holy Franz” took with his music in these concert pieces – though the seven featured here are relatively reverential compared with what Liszt did to Verdi on occasions! However, we do know that the younger composer was grateful for the support….

Since 1998, renowned Spanish conductor and gamba player Jordi Savall’s Alia Vox label has been synonymous with stylish packaging of equally stylish performances of early music.   In 2007 Savall launched the Alia Vox Heritage collection in order to “offer a fresh vision” of the recordings he and his then wife, the soprano Montserrat Figueras, made with their instrumental and vocal ensembles on the Astrée label between 1977 and 1996.   The remastered recordings on the four CDs contained in this handsomely packaged boxed set were originally made on that label between 1987 and 1995. Together they offer a snapshot of the kinds of vocal genres that flourished in Spain between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries, including the secular villancico and ensalada (“salad” – a variety of madrigal) and the sacred mass and motet.   El Cançoner del Duc de Calàbria features music associated with the court of the Duke of Calabria in Valencia by composers such as Aldomar, Flecha, Morales and Guerrero; another CD is devoted to the sacred music of Joan Cererols, a monk who contributed much to the musical life of the monastery at Montserrat. The remaining two discs are given over to the villancicos and…

These new performances are utterly compelling and deserve the widest possible audience.

An excellent album of works by a composer whose musical trajectory was almost as varied as Stravinsky’s, but much less well-known.

Wow, those New York opera critics are a right bunch of grumble-bums, at least if this superb production of Rigoletto is anything togo by. Sure, the Met’s staging earlier this year wasn’t universally panned, but a viewing o the DVD suggests a world-class theatrical spectacle that didn’t deserve its mealy mouthed treatment from some who seem to have taken umbrage that director Michael Mayer came from Broadway and set the whole thing in 1960s Las Vegas. It’s a brilliant concept that actually has you laughing out loud early on, as the Duke (the ever so charming Piotr Beczała) sings Questo a quella in a Rat-Pack style white jacket, crooner’s microphone in hand, and surrounded by showgirls waving their, um, feathers. But then when the tragedy strikes, designer Christine Jones’ casino set with its brilliant elevator exit never imposes, making this a production that compels you to become emotionally engaged in one of the most pathos-ridden final acts that Verdi ever composed, even when the corpse is revealed inside the boot of a Cadillac. The casting’s the key. Želko Lucˇic´ as the eponymous tragic jester who loses his daughter through a terrible twist of fate was criticised for being wooden in…

Given that Haydn left few instructions concerning the interpretation of his sonatas, Bavouzet notes that the performer “must, even more than usual, create his own world, his own logic, left only to hope that … he will not distance himself too far from the composer’s intentions”. Bavouzet relishes this challenge of bringing Haydn’s sonatas to life. In the latest instalment of his cycle he takes two early and four later sonatas and works his own musical magic with them. Of particular concern are the issues of ornamentation and repeats. Repeats are ornamented with imagination and elegance and in certain cases codas are ‘saved’ for the final repeat. These performances are admirable in their attention to detail and are delivered with a technical fluency that is always at the service of the music. The insightful annotations reveal Bavouzet’s fascination with these delightful works and his sense of artistic freedom. In the A major sonata (Hob XVI: 12) he was intrigued by the chromatic, minor mode Trio of the Menuet. As a thoughtful epilogue, he plays it at a much slower speed than would be possible ‘in situ’. Bavouzet’s use of a Yamaha piano with its clear, bright treble is one point…

The world continues to shrink! First we have Philippe Herreweghe and his Champs-Elysées forces in Bruckner’s mighty Fifth Symphony with an orchestra of just 68. Then Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra in a convincing reading of another Bruckner symphony, this time the Second. Robyn Ticciati’s outstanding Symphonie Fantastique a couple of years ago belled the cat about how Berlioz can sound with smaller forces: this emotional roller coaster, where passion so often becomes an extreme sport lacked nothing in drama and, well, passion in their account. This current super-audio disc represents Ticciati’s latest foray into Berlioz. I listened to this release with a Berlioz expert and asked him not to reveal his reaction until after I’d written this revue. When he read it, he concurred completely. We both loved both the performances and the interpretation. The early La Morte de Cleopâtre sees the up-and-coming mezzo-soprano Karin Cargill in quite superb voice. Their can be no greater praise heaped on her than to say that, not since Dame Janet Baker’s recording more than 40 years ago has the worked been so successfully and graphically sung. It has just the right degree of histrionic agony as well as plenty of…

Dynamic New York outfit Brooklyn Rider have quite a knack of marrying interesting takes on the mainstream canon with new commissions and their own original material.

If a label like ECM chooses to back a young composer it’s safe to assume she’s beyond just showing promise. And if Janine Jansen and Maxim Rysanov come to the party with works composed especially for them, their endorsement affirms a major new talent. Meet Dobrinka Tabakova, born in Bulgaria in 1980 but based in London since her early teens. At once forward-looking and steeped in old-school romanticism, the music is sensually attuned to timbre and sweeping melody, with just enough Eastern European bite and folk-derived earthiness lurking beneath the polished surface (listen to the lilting, modal solo in Suite in Old Style’s third movement). Tabakova has a gift for string writing that connects the English lyricism of Vaughan Williams and Elgar to the glassier, sombre textures of Arvo Pärt – the music is always brimming with personality, even if it’s not always immediately apparent that it’s her own. Jansen, the dedicatee of Such Different Paths, steps out of her spotlight to indulge her chamber proclivities, bringing sweetly focused lightness to the driving rhythms. In the dark- hued Concerto for Cello and Strings, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra play at the level of their solist, Latvian Kristina Blaumane (principal cellist of…

This utterly imposing performance of Berlioz’s grandest work was one of the last great triumphs of Sir Colin Davis’s long and illustrious career.

It is rather frightening to contemplate the sheer swiftness with which Widor found his mature style. Every phrase on this CD dates from Widor’s twenties, and though he wrote much equally good music later on, he seldom if ever surpassed his achievements here. Alas, outside France almost no organists now play these two works in concert, unless they have prepared a cycle of all ten Widor symphonies. Readers still unfamiliar with the composer’s idiom will find delightful surprises aplenty. To pluck out instances at random: in No 1, the richly Franckian Adagio, the once celebrated Marche Pontificale with its Elgarian tinge, and the Meditation which in the reticent pathos would not have disgraced a Fauré Barcarolle; in No 2, the prelude’s proto- Reger chromaticism, the Salve Regina movement’s effortless mystic rapture, and the Toccata’s harmonic detours (a thousand pities that this Toccata has been so comprehensively overshadowed by its hackneyed, inferior counterpart from No 5). Perth-based Joseph Nolan favours a moderate approach. At times he might be thought a little too cautious, and he is not always as exuberant as Widor’s admittedly puzzling metronome marks would imply. For example, Widor gave a crotchet = 100 indication for No 1’s Allegretto;…

If you’ve taken a look at its hideous cover art, and somehow managed to avoid having its offensively kitschy image burned permanently onto your retinas, and similarly survived a read-through of the tedious booklet without lapsing into a word-induced coma, you might finally get around to listening to the music contained in Nicholas Vines’ album, Torrid Nature Scenes. And you might even discover that, despite the visual signs to the contrary, this young Australian composer’s music is surprisingly good – damn good, in fact. The collection comprises three of his recent chamber pieces, The Butcher of Brisbane, The Economy of Wax and Torrid Nature Scene, performed by the splendidly named American new music ensemble Callithumpian Consort and soloists. All three works are rich in atmospheric soundscapes, gestural impact, complex rhythmic overlaying, and fresh thematic ideas. Particularly impressive is the album’s title work, Torrid Nature Scene, for solo soprano, mezzo-soprano and chamber group. Described in typically vivid language in the booklet as “a squelchy, romping obscenity” (sigh), the seven-movement work plays as an inverted pastorale. Bawdy neo-Shakespearian poetry by Andrew Robbie is set to music that captivates from beginning to end, bathing us in ever-evolving textures, and steering us through a…