Music
Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance by Belle & Sebastian
When asked to write this review I couldn’t help indulging in nostalgia for the time I lived in Glasgow. It was the ’90s and the popular book/music shop where I worked in the hip West End was a revolving door…
Gabriel Fauré: Requiem
Fauré’s Requiem is masterpiece. Robust as it is intimate, the combination of choir, soloists, organ, and orchestra creates astonishing dramatic impact. Fauré worked on the setting over a thirteen-year period, during which time it received at least three performances. The…
Luigi Boccherini & Giovanni Battista Cirri: Cello Sonatas
Until recently I’d heard of neither Australian cellist Catherine Jones nor the composer Giovanni Battista Cirri. Jones’s recording of the Boccherini and Cirri cello sonatas is, therefore, brimming with treats and surprises for this happy listener.
Jones was born in…
Dancing Shadows: the music of Miriam Hyde for flute & piano
If you haven’t heard of Miriam Hyde, you’re missing a big chunk of Australian musical history. One of the most successful Australian female composers of the 20th Century, she premiered with the London Symphony Orchestra at the ripe old age…
Gon' Boogaloo by CW Stoneking
It’s been six long years since we were last afforded a glimpse into the weird and wonderful world of Australian bluesman, supreme yarn-spinner and tall tale teller C.W. Stoneking. I’ve been shipwrecked twice and broken a series of long standing…
La Belle Excentrique by Patricia Petibon
Much like the character Gil’s experience in Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris, listening to La Belle Excentrique is like stumbling into a music hall in 1920s France, complete with the idiosyncratic accordion accompaniment. Soprano Patricia Petibon’s latest CD…
Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone by Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams must be one of the best American artists of the past three decades, both as a songwriter and singer. Her career took a long time to get going; Williams achieved initial success when others began to cover her…
JS Bach: Cello Suites 1–6 by Nina Kotova
Of all the recordings of the Bach Cello Suites, since Pablo Casals rediscovered the suites at the end of the nineteenth-century, remarkably few are by women. Perhaps women have been hesitant to enter what has hitherto been a very male-dominated…
Brahms: The Piano Trios by Oliver Schnyder Trio
When I listen to Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, the thought always crosses my mind that it was so close to being destroyed. Brahms destroyed all his early works, including the ones that everyone else praised. And…
Sukierae by Tweedy
When the band Uncle Tupelo broke up 20 years ago, Jeff Tweedy went on to form Wilco. Over the years since he has introduced us to heartbreakingly beautiful songs that are rich with aching sorrow or pure unbridled joy. Since…
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