Our latest reviews
The Good, the Bad, the Awkward, Sally Whitwell
This title perfectly suits this new release from recent piano superstar, Sally Whitwell. From the very first track, performed on melodica you can hear that Whitwell is a musician strong in her own sense of self. I read the CD…
Canada by Richard Ford
Canada tells the story of Dell Parson, a 15-year-old boy living in Great Falls Montana in 1960 with his parents. Father Bev was a bomber pilot in the war, and still works for the Air Force, which means the family…
Text Classics: They’re a Weird Mob by Nino Culotta
In a way, They’re a Weird Mob reads just as much as a love-letter to the Australian language as it does as a paranorma of immigration and culture-shock in 1950s Sydney.
Nino Culotta, both narrator and apparent author of the…
Text Classics: The Commandant by Jessica Anderson
It’s peculiar to Australian history - the penal sites around our coast and the heartbreak they caused. Recently I was fortunate enough to visit the Tasmanian site and while reading Jessica Anderson’s novel, The Commandant the vision of the tiny…
Text Classics: Cosmo Cosmolino by Helen Garner
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992) was Helen Garner’s last work of fiction before she pioneered her own distinctive brand of questing, addictive narrative non-fiction with The First Stone.
It’s an unusual book; not quite a novel, not quite a short-story collection…
The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower
The Watch Tower is almost a psychological thriller; it has the pace and tension of one and is an absolutely compelling reading. Set in Sydney around the late fifties it’s the story of two sisters, Laura and Clare, who are…
Verdi: La Traviata, Sutherland
Verdi’s opera, La Traviata really needs know introduction, nor does the star on this recording, Dame Joan Sutherland. Her much lamented passing in 2010 has encouraged the re-release of some of her most glorious recordings. This production was recording in…
Love & Longing, Magdalena Kozena
This is a very interesting meld of works, with three wildly different composers. Starting with Antonin Dvorak’s Biblical Songs for Voice and Orchestra, we go via France and Ravel’s tone poem, Sheherazade through to Mahler and his Five Songs based…
Mozart Piano Concerto No 20 & 21, Jan Lisiecki
I have always been told that Mozart is incredibly easy for the very young and the very old. Normally we have Mozart from those at the height of their career’s, so this CD is a change as the soloist here…
Fantasia, Yuja Wang
I feel like encores are the flavour at the moment. There are lots of albums coming out from all over the place featuring favourite encores of particular performers. It’s a great way to have a peak into the mind of…
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