Music
Concertante! by Les Vents Français
Hands up who’s heard of a concertante? Most people would know the format of a concerto – a soloist and an orchestra. But a concertante has not just one soloist, but two, three or even more! The epically amazing and…
John Adams: Violin Concerto by Leila Josefowicz
Sometimes, when listening to John Adams’s violin concerto, I expected the soaring violin line to continue to rise. It was not so: Adams’s music is full of the unexpected. Although (a decade ago now) I wrote my honours thesis on…
The Lookout by Laura Veirs
I first listened to Laura Veirs new album, The Lookout, in my car. I had it on rotation and just let the songs flow effortlessly from one into the other. My biggest problem was that I wanted to pull…
Wayfaring by Umberto Clerici & Karin Schaupp
Wayfaring, a collaboration between Italian-Australian cellist Umberto Clerici and German-Australian guitarist Karin Schaupp, traces a path ‘from birth to death, with everything in between’. Considering repertoire for solo cello and guitar is scant, Wayfaring features a number of song…
Vocalise by Nuria Rial
Heitor Villa-Lobos dreamt up the imaginative combination of eight cellos and soprano soloist. His famous composition for such an ensemble is Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 – part vocalise and part lament – based on the music of his native Brazil…
Baroque: Music for Viola by Nils Mönkemeyer
Finally after all these years of reviews, I have a virtuosic viola album to review! The ‘King of Instruments’ (as it has been dubbed in certain circles), is often the considered the poor cousin to the violin but it has…
Whistle Down the Wind by Joan Baez
Joan Baez has emerged from a 10-year hiatus with a powerful new studio album. Her voice has a different range, earthier and more contemporary. Many of the songs on Whistle Down the Wind are reflections on growing older, facing transition…
After Bach by Brad Mehldau
I come to Brad Mehldau’s latest album After Bach with classical rather than jazz ears. The album is structured around excerpts from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II, and each alternate track is composed by Mehldau, literally…
The Verdi Album by Sonya Yoncheva
Sonya Yoncheva’s voice is big and bold and soars above the orchestra like a gloriously voluptuous bird of prey. This young Bulgarian soprano is a principal artist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and it’s no mystery why. She’s…
Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov & Shostakovich by the Orava Quartet
Did we need yet another string quartet album in the world? I didn’t think so, until I listened to the latest release from Deutsche Grammophon of an Australian group, the Orava Quartet. What is most apparent from the opening chords…
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