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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…
A History of Books by Gerald Murnane
On the eighth page of Barley Patch – a work of fiction by Gerald Murnane, published in 2009, the first such work to appear since Murnane decided that he was finished writing novels over a decade earlier, and for that…
British Flute Concertos
Emily Beynon is stunning flautist who is Principal Flute of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Originally from Wales, she returns to England to perform work with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It’s a beautiful set of works celebrating the compositions and…
Massenet: Werther
The opera Werther is a tale of love, loss and family. Opera superstar Rolando Villazon takes the role of Werther in this new recording from Deutsche Grammophon. With Antonio Pappano conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House it’s a…
Eleven Seasons by Paul D. Carter
[[carter-paul]]Paul Carter’s Eleven Seasons is a great read, and certainly seems like a deserving winner of the Australian/Vogel’s literary award (for best unpublished manuscript by an author under 35). Importantly, for a book almost entirely concerned with sport and…
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