CD Review: Water/ Hélène Grimaud
Pianist Hélène Grimaud’s recent recording Water, is an intensely pleasurable album which, at one level is a purely visceral experience which beckons you to immerse yourself in its calm and cooling waters, emerging cleansed and refreshed. At another level, it serves as an elegant reminder of the fragility of our environment and the preciousness of…
CD Review: Baroque Divas
From a seemingly inexhaustible repository of Baroque arias comes a collection from Decca, entitled Baroque Divas. The recording celebrates the beauty (or perhaps the beast) that is the Baroque aria along with its unique style of singing, instrumental playing and the 21st century musicians who are keeping its practices alive. Although the arias were all…
Concert Review: Beautiful Boccherini/ Australian Haydn Ensemble/ Sara Macliver
Beautiful Boccherini – Australian Haydn Ensemble with Sara Macliver, soprano Skye McIntosh (Artistic Director & violin)/ Simone Slattery (violin)/ James Eccles (viola)/ Anthony Albrecht (cello)/ Jacqueline Dosser (double bass)/ Melissa Farrow (flute) Cell Block Theatre, Darlinghurst Sunday 13 March 2016 The Australian Haydn Ensemble’s (AHE) inaugural Sydney concert for their 2016 season opened with the first movement of Boccherini’s Flute Quintet in g…
CD Review: Beethoven Piano Trios/ Seraphim Trio
The Seraphim Trio: Anna Goldsworthy, piano/ Helen Ayers, violin/ Timothy Nankervis, cello The Seraphim Trio’s new recording of three Beethoven piano trios is a spin-off from their 2015 Beethoven Immersion project when they performed all Beethoven’s piano trios across a wide variety of venues around Australia. Throughout this recording they display the classic virtues of fine chamber…
CD Review: Pleasure Garden/ Genevieve Lacey
With her recent CD release Pleasure Garden, recorder virtuosa Genevieve Lacey invites us to explore the sounds of nature, that from the first moments of opening and peering cautiously round a rusted gate, take us down a path discovering a living, breathing world of plants (Lichen,Amarilli, Daphne), birds (Her Nest, Whipbird), rocks (Granite) and other…
Chamber Opera Review: Voyage To The Moon/ Musica Viva And Victorian Opera
Kudos to Michael Gow and Musica Viva with Victorian Opera for their creation Voyage to the Moon, a Baroque pastiche with libretto and direction by Gow, and a score constructed by the late Alan Curtis, complemented by Calvin Bowman after Curtis’ sudden death during the project. The chamber opera opened in Sydney this week with…
Opera Review: Luisa Miller/Opera Australia
It is well worth getting to the Joan Sutherland Theatre a little ahead of the performance of Verdi’s Luisa Miller to contemplate the diorama that presages the production. In stark tones of black and white, the scene is one of formulaic domestic bliss. Could that be a bust of Verdi smiling benignly down on the…
Opera Review: The Barber Of Seville/ Opera Australia
The Barber of Seville – Gioachino Rossini Opera Australia, 28 January 2016 Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. Elijah Moshinsky’s 1995 production of Rossini’s Barber of Seville has proven, over the subsequent 20 years, to be one of the company’s most popular and enduring. Although set in the 1920s it is an otherwise traditional production…
CD Preview: The Kiss/ Nicole Car/ Australian Opera And Ballet Orchestra/ Andrea Molino
Hot on the heels of her successful debut at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, late in 2015 and several lauded roles for Opera Australia over the past few years, soprano Nicole Car has released her debut album The Kiss (ABC Classics). For the recording, Andrea Molino conducts the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, an ensemble…