Name an instance of unaccompanied violin music not by Bach or Paganini and most of us will struggle. Unless, that is, we have a special affinity with Belgium, in which case, the half-dozen works which Eugène Ysaÿe produced (1923-24) may have come to our attention. While both Franck and Chausson dedicated their best-known violin compositions to Ysaÿe, even violinists themselves rarely show much interest in his original output. A new recording emerges every few years but swiftly fades from view. Each movement of these pieces could appropriately bear Liszt’s title: “studies in transcendental execution.” But Liszt seldom discernibly influences the actual music, and anyone who dreads being subjected to a kind of hour-long Flight of the Bumble-Bee has a congenial surprise in store. Most obvious of the music’s features is its severity, suggesting Busoni above all. The printed score’s pages are black with expression marks and bowing indications as well as notes, but the writing never sounds over-ornate. Rather, it remains profound, however energetic. No real portraiture of the dedicatees, all great violinists themselves, appears to have been intended. The Fourth Sonata, inscribed to Kreisler, sounds scarcely less austere than the First, inscribed to Szigeti, though suggestions of Romanian fire…

A pioneering recording offers a fascinating window into the musical world of Henry VIII’s controversial second wife. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Media recluse he may be, but Sokolov in Salzburg is a definite must-have for all piano aficionados. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Latvian Ēriks Ešenvalds is one of the latest group of non-British composers to be lionised by that most British of establishments, the Oxbridge choral scene. From 2011 to 2013 he was Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge where he collaborated extensively with the choir. Its director, Stephen Layton perceptively describes Ešenvalds as “a compositional chameleon”. Therein lies a dilemma. Undoubtedly greatly talented and adept at bringing alive all manner of different texts, Ešenvalds’ music left me wondering where his real voice lay. His Trinity Te Deum is as grand as any other essay in that genre, while his Merton College Service is served up in attractive homophony spiced with cluster chords, but which leaves the listener thinking it could have been composed any time in the last half-century. O Salutaris Hostia starts promisingly with echoes of MacMillan but becomes cloyingly saccharine. Amazing Grace is given a treatment that would make Hollywood envious. Moving away from church music Ešenvalds becomes more original and individual. Northern Lights and his two settings of Sara Teasdale, The New Moon and Stars, suggest there is salvation beyond conformism. Needless to say, Ešenvalds has the best possible advocates in Layton and his…

Hyperion’s third instalment in their survey of Hungarian Ernö Dohnányi’s solo piano music explores the composer’s period of increasing professional establishment. Dohnányi’s language may be less familiar than contemporaries like Rachmaninov, Ravel, or even Scriabin, but share that early-20th-century strain of romanticism, sparkling impressionism, and the strong influence of folk music. The real treasure here is Ruralia Hungarica, a multi-movement work exploring folk material from Dohnányi’s homeland, including songs for minstrels, children and soldiers, and an energetic csárdás. Some movements feature songlike phrase structures with splashes of Debussian colour. Others adopt an almost Rachmaninov-like sense of power, with incessant chords in parallel fifths and rich dissonances. In contrast, the Three Pieces (Aria, Valse Impromptu and Capriccio) have a Chopinesque feel. The Gavotte and Musette are cute divertissements, though lacking ingenuity next to Ruralia Hungarica. The album is rounded out with virtuoso waltz arrangements of Delibes’ Nalia Waltz, and Strauss’s Schatz-Walzer and Du und Du. Martin Roscoe captures every nuance with consummate virtuosity and a flair for negotiating the shifts in mood that characterise Dohnányi’s style. The interpretation is romantic but never overdone, painting in shades that one moment suggest drama, the next serenity. A fine performance of captivating music. Continue…

This month’s list of Australia’s top 20 classical music albums.

This month's list of Australia's top 20 classical music albums.

Carolyn Sampson has long avoided the harsh glare of stardom but become a favourite singer for “those in the know” – and if you are not one of those it is about time you were. She has graced an extensive array of fine recordings over the last decade or so, standing out amongst some starry casts with her impeccable technique and musicality. A few years ago she gave us a superb recital of Rameau arias, Regne Amour, in collaboration with Jeffrey Skidmore’s group Ex Cathedra and follows up with this delightful gem.  The program is a tribute to Marie Fel who was the superstar soprano of the French Baroque, captivating the Paris Opera and Concert Spirituel in a career lasting 35 years. She even inspired the philosopher Rousseau to compose a Salve regina included here. She was the darling of the intelligentsia and her 81 years were full of colourful incident, including bearing three children to three fathers.  If 73 minutes of French Baroque soprano arias might seem a daunting prospect with a whole lot of twittering trills and appoggiaturas, do not be fazed as this program has been cleverly chosen with sacred works, including an Italianate Laudate pueri by…

I first made the acquaintance of Handel’s harpsichord music through the medium of guitar duet. “Just listen to this,” a friend said, handing me a record of the G Major Chaconne as arranged and performed by legendary husband and wife duo Alexandre Lagoya and Ida Presti. It was a revelation. Since then I’ve heard Handel’s so-called Eight Great Suites (1720), to which Danny Driver has added for this recording the aforementioned Chaconne as well as two additional suites in C Minor and E Minor, played on harpsichord and piano by such luminaries as Sviatoslav Richter and Andrei Gavrilov, Laurence Cummings and Richard Egarr. Those of a less completist bent included Murray Perahia and Keith Jarrett.  All, I felt, had something individual to say. But the question remained: did Handel’s music benefit more from the overtone-laden sonority of the plucked harpsichord or the pedaled richness and dynamically-shaded clarity of the hammered piano? Frankly it depends on who’s driving (pardon the pun), and with Danny Driver at the wheel you’d swear they had been composed for the piano. Handel’s suites show enormous variety, boasting variations on the French dance suite, the four-movement sonata da chiesa, improvisatory preludes, rigorous fugues and sets of…

For ages Haydn’s piano concertos were overshadowed by those of Mozart. It is true that Mozart’s Concertos Nos 20-27 are
 so substantial as to make Haydn’s look like trifles. The three concertos on this disc, Nos 3, 4 and 11, are in fact the only ones of Haydn actually confirmed to have been written by him. They contain all the joie de vivre we associate with this composer at his sunniest, as well as (in the G Major) a sublime slow movement that clearly influenced several composers in years 
to come, not least Beethoven. Indeed, Beethoven’s two earliest piano concertos would not exist without Haydn’s in D Major: the best known of his three.
 The first thing one notices in this recording is the tight ensemble and single-minded attack of the Violons du Roy: 
a moderately-sized string orchestra based in Quebec. (The Concertos in F and G use only string accompaniment.) These musicians play modern instruments but are historically informed in matters of vibrato and bowing. Hamelin, also Canadian, is a super virtuoso; Haydn poses no technical challenge to him whatsoever. He brings strength and colour as well as insouciance to the music. At times this team may seem a…

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was one of the 18th century’s great musical rebels, working in a revolutionary and transitional period but destined to be overshadowed by others. History has a way of doing that to composers who don’t fit neatly into boxes. His father Johann Sebastian Bach and Mozart, geniuses both, perfectly reflect their times. Emanuel Bach may have been just as gifted, but he is neither Baroque fish nor Classical fowl and only now, it seems, are we really beginning to recognise his unique talents. Eschewing the single-emotion-per-movement model of his father’s generation, he revels in veering from one mood to another, juxtaposing introspection with temperamental outbursts and exploring divergent rhythms and quirky harmonies. Revered by Mozart, this is music that at times reaches beyond Classicism into the turbulence of Beethoven and the Romantic period. In short, CPE Bach was quite a visionary. There are four Sonatas here, the first dating from 1744 (Emanuel’s most radical period) while the latest work, a Fantasie, dates from 1787, the year before he died. The early F-Sharp Minor Sonata begins with a highly unsettling movement, playing off an unstable rhythmic motive against an endearing gallant tune. His kaleidoscopic treatment of these two…

The British virtuoso gave Young Performers Awards finalist Jeremy So some pointers at the piano.