In 19th-century Poland, composers faced a real dilemma. The country had been partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria, super-powers with a vested interest in keeping nationalistic music firmly out of the public domain. That left
 you two options. The first was 
to become a composer-virtuoso (the path taken by Paderewski along the way to becoming Polish Prime Minister) so you might be able to export your music to an international audience. Juliusz Zarębski (1854-85), complete with flamboyant shock of hair, was one such showman, gaining a European reputation for his performances on a double keyboard piano. The other possibility was to stay at home and teach, the sedate choice of Władysław Żeleński (1837-1921). These two gentlemen of two roads diverg’d are the subjects of this fascinating disc from Hyperion. Zarębski’s Piano Quintet, a 40-minute work as rich in melody as it is strong on motivic development, was heard in Martha Argerich’s impassioned 2011 Lugano Festival release. The composer was clearly something of an innovator, employing bold tonal shifts and quirky rhythmic devices. The 
 Żeleński Piano Quartet is entirely new to CD but should make many friends on this showing: as tuneful as the Zarębski but with an added layer…

Strange as it may seem now, Prokofiev’s most famous ballet had a particularly painful birth. The Soviet director Adrian Piotrovsky suggested a ballet adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy to the composer in 1935, but the Bolshoi pronounced the finished work “undanceable”. The Kirov agreed to stage Romeo and Juliet (complete with happy ending!) but plans were rapidly shelved after the dramaturge
 was denounced in the Pravda article Balletic Falsehood. It was his libretto for Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream that 
had offended. Piotrovsky was arrested and shot the following year – a definite nadir for the arts in Stalin’s Russia. The revised version (now with acceptable tragic ending) didn’t see the light of day until 1940, when the Bolshoi turned out to be able to dance it after all. Since then it has conquered the world, danced by the likes of Fonteyn and Nureyev. The three suites are regular concert items. Sydney Symphony chief Vladimir Ashkenazy clearly identifies strongly with the work, having recorded it for Decca
 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra ten years ago. He rightly treats it as Prokofiev’s most elevated piece – sincere, emotional and unflagging in its inspiration. So how does the new CD stack up? On…

In his booklet notes to this most bewitching of releases, David Cranmer quotes from a 1787 journal entry by the English traveller William Beckford, in which he refers to modinhas, or Portuguese love songs: “This is an original sort of music different from any I ever heard, the most seducing, the most voluptuous imaginable, the best calculated to throw saints off their guard and to inspire profane deliriums.” Wow. Fans of Portuguese fado
 will find these songs, which effortlessly bridged the gap between the popular and the courtly, immediately attractive, languid and sensual. Just listen to a modinha such as Tempo que breve passaste (“So short a time you passed”) by Antonio da Silva Leite. Then there are those, such as the bright, cheeky Onde vas linda Negrinha (“Where are you going, pretty black girl”) by the same composer, alive with Afro- Brazilian rhythms. L’Avventura London director Zak Ozmo, who also plays Spanish and English guitars, has wisely broken up the songs and instrumental works with more “classical” fare with a Portuguese connection – keyboard pieces by Carlos de Seixas and Domenico Scarlatti. The performances by sopranos Sandra Medeiros and Joana Seeara, violone player Andrew Kerr and guitarists Taro Takeuchi…

Vivica Genaux’s superb recording of arias by Handel and Hasse composed for Faustina Bordoni shows why that 18th-century singer, who had a notorious catfight with her rival Francesca Cuzzoni in front of the Princess
 of Wales, was so envied. Handel wrote some glorious arias for her, most notably Lusinghe piu care from Alessandro, beautifully sung by Genaux on the opening track. Johann Adolph Hasse didn’t quite have the magic touch of Handel musically, but he married Bordoni and then proceeded to compose 
at least 15 operatic roles for her – truly justifying their contemporary reputation as the power couple of 18th-century opera. As for Genaux, she began her career singing Hasse’s music back in the 1990s with René Kollo, and her interest in his repertoire has never faltered. Her tightly controlled coloratura is ideally suited to Hasse’s technical showpieces, especially in Padre ingiusto from Cajo Fabricio. Genaux’s voice gets swamped occasionally in the Radio Bremen mix, but such is her compelling presence on disc that it hardly matters, and generally she finds sympathetic support in the Cappella Gabetta, established in 2010 with brother and sister Andrés and Sol Gabetta as the driving forces. They are sparkling interpreters of the Baroque…

The most gorgeous thing, even though it’s not exactly a bargain, and it’s never sounded better either.

By any standards, Opera Australia’s staging of La Traviata on Sydney Harbour in April was 
a triumph. The terrifying logistics included a purpose-built raked stage on foundations driven deep into the harbour bed, a signature oversized chandelier rising and falling above the action, and amplified singers coordinated by video-link with conductor Brian Castles-Onion and the AOBO Orchestra underneath it all. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, and did anyone mention how much this all must have cost? In the end, the critics were unanimous in their praise for 
a production that had so many unforgettable visual images associated with it, from the fireworks at the end of the drinking song, to the high notes in Sempre Libera being sung mid-air above Sydney Harbour, and on to the party guests in Act Two arriving by water-taxi. But as this incredible DVD demonstrates, what made this production one for the ages was the exact opposite of spectacle. With its superb casting, Francesca Zambello’s staging of the Verdi masterpiece centres ultimately on the deep and profoundly human relationships that occur against that tawdry world of the beautiful people and their glitter-ball existence. Librettist Francesco Piave’s intense psychological drama features lengthy duets wherein the…

The First World War took its toll on a whole generation but George Butterworth was probably British music’s greatest loss, killed on
 the Somme in 1916. Ivor Gurney survived, but was confined to a mental hospital for most of his remaining life. Ralph Vaughan Williams escaped with impaired hearing but his musical outlook was darkly coloured by his wartime experiences. Programming these composers side by side isn’t unusual (Simon Keenlyside’s excellent Songs of War is still fresh in my ears), but when the singer is as good as James Rutherford it’s a pleasure to revisit the repertoire. The songs were mostly written before the conflict and so are not all as mournful as the CD cover might suggest. Death is a regular guest of A E Housman, and Gurney’s poems are certainly elegiac, but there is much idyllic music here as well. Butterworth’s Bredon Hill and On the Idle Hill of Summer, Gurney’s Severn Meadows and Sleep and Vaughan Williams Let Beauty Awake and Bright is the Ring of Words are among the finest songs in any language. James Rutherford’s is a substantial baritone voice, darker than Bryn Terfel’s but with plenty of bite. Thomas Allen (or indeed Keenlyside) may…

Bernarda Fink has a vibrant mezzo-soprano voice and the sense of style to interpret this program to the manner born – which, despite her surname, she was. The daughter of Slovenian parents, she was brought up in Buenos Aires. Her repertoire includes Baroque music and mainstream German and French song, but this Spanish recital does not come out of the blue: it follows an earlier release of Argentinean songs from 2006. The diverse program,
which includes many rarities, concentrates on three of the
four masters of 20th-century Spanish song. (The missing one is Joaquín Turina.) It opens with Falla’s well-known Seven Popular Spanish Songs, and straight away Fink reveals her strengths: a strong chest voice for Andalusian declamation, the ability to float her warm tone at the top of her register and an understanding of the emotional terrain that allows her to hold nothing back in this spirited, heart-on-sleeve music. Rodrigo’s gentle Adela 
follows, the first of his Tres canciones españolas, and here Fink presents a beautifully poised cantilena against the simple accompaniment, rendered with style by American pianist Anthony Spiri. Rodrigo’s songs tend to
be spare in texture, Granados’s popular Tonadillas notable for their elegance, while Falla remains the most earthy. Throughout,…

It can’t be easy being Lang Lang, what with the hype surrounding him as the world’s favourite pianist and all. And yet as a commercial commodity the 30-year-old’s been delivering that showmanship and technical excellence ever since he wowed Beijing and the world more than half his lifetime ago. The hard bit comes in translating the unparalleled reputation into musical performances that truly take your breath away year after year. He remains a wonderful player, the recording quality of his discs is a given, and in the show- off works like those featured on his previous Liszt album, his extrovert style is hard to beat. But Chopin? Sure, it’s well- known that Lang Lang has built much of his career on this beloved composer’s work, and for the non- specialist music-lover buying on the performer’s well-deserved reputation alone, there will be more than enough musical ability here to leave a favourable impression. But for those comparing Lang Lang’s Chopin
 with recent efforts by the now- septuagenarian Maurizio Pollini
on DG, and Lang Lang’s labelmate, young tearaway Khatia Buniatishvili, things become more competitive. With all the poetry and sadness deriving from a lifetime of supreme musicianship, Pollini’s take on
the 24 Preludes Op…

Not many composers would be reasonably justified in releasing a retrospective collection of their works at the meager age of 33, let alone have the arsenal in their creative inventory to present it in five meaty volumes. But then, having already collaborated with the likes of Richard Tognetti, Jon Rose and Brett Dean, Melbourne-raised Anthony Pateras isn’t like many other young composers. Pateras’ Collected Works 2002–2012 affirms his position as one of the most respected and sought-after Australian composers of his generation. The 5-CD limited edition box set spans a decade of creative output across various instrumental media, from chamber, orchestral to solo piano. Reproduced in the notes are excerpts from a handful of Pateras’ highly personal and oftentimes clinically schematic scores, offering a fascinating insight into the composer’s unique way of assembling sounds. The list of Pateras’ recruited performing artists reads as an all-star line of Australian talent, comprising Dean conducting the ANAM Orchestra in the fragmented, free-wheeling Immediata electric violin concerto with Tognetti as soloist, Melbourne-based experimental outfit Golden Fur in chamber piece Broken then fixed then Broken, and Timothy Munro as bass flautist in the ethereal and monolithic Lost Compass. Pateras himself executes a mix of prepared…

An impertinent, altogether exhilarating performance filled with extreme tempo and dynamic shifts

“Too much beer and bread,” said Paul Dukas about the music of Johannes Brahms, and certainly there have been some who have found the contrapuntal density of the Viennese master an inhibition. It would be a churlish listener, however, who could apply this prejudice to the violin sonatas, packed as they are with gentle lyricism,
 memorable melody and plenty 
of fresh air between the notes.
These three works, written over 
a ten-year period, show Brahms
 at his sunniest and have attracted distinguished interpreters. This 
latest CD features British violinist
 Anthony Marwood and his Serbian
 partner, pianist Aleksandar Madžar, recorded live at London’s Wigmore Hall. The duo recently delighted Australian audiences on their national tour for Musica Viva and so this CD is doubly welcome. The G Major Sonata here receives one of
 the loveliest readings I can recall, Marwood’s silvery tone spinning a continuous line with numerous inspired touches. A violinist with 
a lighter touch yields riches and offers greater flexibility than those who opt for melody at the expense of a more engaging conversational tone. The outer movements capture Brahms’s magical Viennese lilt and the poignant Adagio is especially memorable, its mellow song wistfully tugging at the heart. Madžar here……