Music
Please Leave Your Light On by Paul Kelly & Paul Grabowsky
In these extremely strange and challenging times, it’s nice sometimes to be able to fall back on some old favourites to help us through. And they don’t come any more familiar than the Pauls: Kelly & Grabowsky. The latter is…
Verdi: Otello by Jonas Kaufmann
Nowadays, it’s rare for a record company to produce a full-length studio recording of opera, but, for star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, Sony Classical makes an exception. And what a wonderful gift for opera fans at this time when live music…
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5 & Finzi: Clarinet Concerto by Michael Collins
He hath given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death. – Bunyan
Written above the third movement of Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony, Romanza, these words are deceptively multilayered. Not just pertinent to the years in which…
Death and the Maiden by 12 Ensemble
Fans of the Australian Chamber Orchestra will instantly recognise the oeuvre of 12 Ensemble. They are a string orchestra that performs as a chamber ensemble, with no conductor. This brings a heightened sense of musicality to their performances.
This second…
Aspects of America: Pulitzer Edition by Oregon Symphony & Carlos Kalmar
As many people would be aware, classical repertoire can take a long time to work its way into the hearts of listeners (J.S. Bach being an obvious one, only becoming popular eighty years after his death). The twentieth century is…
Purcell: The Fairy Queen, 1692 by Gabrieli Consort & Paul McCreesh
Purcell’s semi-opera The Fairy Queen is loosely based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: there are fairies and drunken poets; there is lust, passion, and confusion. Lovers are parted and reunited; Titania falls in love with Bottom- as-ass; a…
Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan, always sitting pretty at the top of the songwriter tree, has delivered us an album definitely of its time. Not one to deliver us random old tunes and musings during this time of social distancing, Dylan instead dropped…
Women of Note: A Century of Australian Composers, Volume 2
To coincide with International Women’s Day 2020, ABC Classic has released Volume 2 in the Women of Note series, featuring another impressive program of fabulous music by composers both famous and lesserknown. Volume 1, which contained well-known favourites such as…
Mixing Colours by Roger & Brian Eno
Despite working on and off with each other since 1983, this is the Eno brothers’ first collaborative album to be widely released. Developed across a rather astonishing fifteen-year timeframe, this fraternal collaboration has yielded an inspired collection of delicate Ambient…
Beethoven: The Piano Concertos by Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Happy 250th Birthday Beethoven! The classical music world is going mad for all new Beethoven recordings and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is jumping on that bandwagon. Teaming up with fellow Australian pianist Jayson Gillham, the ASO have released recordings of…
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