Any good new recording of The Four Seasons should always be welcomed. This one by Daniel Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra is more than good: it’s outstanding. Listening to these dramatic, historically-informed performances, one is immediately struck by how Vivaldi’s prefatory sonnets and musical sound-painting can become not mere evocations of natural phenomena but starting points for deliberate, and far more exciting, abstractions which find their loci in pure emotion. Especially to be welcomed is Hope’s fluent, abundant decoration of the melodic line, particularly in the slower movements, which is echoed by the marvellously imaginative continuo section’s own elaborations. Offering a bracing new take on a classic is one thing; providing a new context for it is something else. And that something else may well be what ultimately attracts you. There have been myriad responses from various composers to Vivaldi’s original, such as Kalman Cseki’s Alpha, Apocalypse and Armageddon and Oliver Davis’ settings of Vivaldi’s sonnets, Anno and Anno Epilogue. Here we have something different: a pre-existing or newly-composed work assigned to each month of the year, with accompanying artwork – paintings or drawings – that is beautifully reproduced in the recording’s booklet along with copious notes by Hope….

Berlin Philharmonic principal clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer co-founded the Bürgenstock Festival, which takes place near Lucerne, in 2011, and his Berlin Phil colleagues Emmanuel Pahud and Albrecht Meyer are regular guests. This recording is the third released by Ottensamer and friends as part of the Bürgenstock Festival Edition. As Ottensamer writes in his booklet notes, “The spirit of the Mannheim School, being all about finding new ways of making music and trying to unify all aspects of musicianship, lives on in the mindset of our festival.” Thus New Era pays homage to, via orchestral music featuring solo clarinet, a selection of composers associated with or inspired by the extraordinary music coming out of the Mannheim court of the Elector of Pfalzbayern in the 18th century – music that indeed heralded a new era. Johann Stamitz (1717–1757) was one of the chief instigators of the spirit of relentless musical experimentation and innovation that prevailed at court during this time. His Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in B Flat opens, with Ottensamer performing on a modern clarinet, as he does in the following work, Franz Danzi’s Concertino for Clarinet, Bassoon and Orchestra in B Flat, where he is joined by Meyer playing… Continue…

A stylish, brooding take on Puccini's Tosca by West Australian Opera.

Artistic director of Russia’s Perm State Opera, Greek-born conductor Teodor Currentzis and his relentlessly drilled HIP orchestra Musica Aeterna have been attracting encomia and outrage in equal measure for their thrilling, uncompromising and often eccentric accounts of works by composers from Purcell to Stravinsky and Shostakovich. This recording of Mozart’s Don Giovanni – apparently released a year later than planned because Currentzis was unhappy and insisted on doing it all over again – completes the firebrand’s survey of the composer’s three operas to libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Like his Nozze di Figaro and Così Fan Tutte, Currentzis’ take on the Don grips you from the terrifying overture and sweeps you along to the terrible denouement. Again, the precision of the orchestral playing, often at breakneck speed, defies belief. Currentzis sees Don Giovanni as inhabiting a very specific soundworld combining “the coldness of the Salzburg church music tradition” with “a Mediterranean Baroque sound.” Thus Don Giovanni (Dimitris Tiliakos) strikes one as more pitiable than ever; Leporello (Vito Priante) despite his servitude, more admirable, while Karina Gauvin’s Donna Elvira is the very embodiment of a woman scorned. Mika Kares (Il Commendatore), Myrtò Papatanasiu (Donna Anna), Kenneth Tarver (Don Ottavio), Christina Gansch…

It seems beyond John Butt’s Dunedin Consort to issue a recording that is less than perfect, and this ravishing account of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is no exception. Not only does the clarity and beauty of the singing and instrumental playing blow anything else out of the water; Butt’s approach to realising Bach’s intentions under very specific performing conditions is committed yet flexible and open-minded.   For example, he uses two SATB choirs comprising just one voice per part – the maximum number Bach may have had at his disposal at any one time. Of the six cantatas comprising the oratorio, I, III and VI are sung by one choir, II, IV and V by the other. For those cantatas with trumpet parts (I, III and VI) he uses the “redundant” choir as “ripienists” to reinforce the part in the choruses and chorales – in reality, Bach would have used “apprentice” singers here. As Butt writes in his excellent booklet note, “The aim then is to try and present the range of choral scoring that Bach seems to have used, from doubled vocal lines through to single lines for parts I, IV and V… This approach is definitely not meant to…

Slava Grigoryan's first solo album in 15 years is well worth the wait.

Mozart started work on his incomplete opera Zaide in 1779 at the age of 23, finishing just 15 numbers before setting it aside to write Idomeneo. Its two acts – there would have been three – are however filled with some wonderful music including two melodramas and the most famous number, Zaïde’s Ruhe sanft. Act One finds Gomatz (Allan Clayton) among the slaves of Sultan Soliman (Stuart Jackson). He sleeps to forget his plight and, as he does, Soliman’s favourite odalisque Zaide (Sophie Bevan), sings Rest gently by his side. Soon enough, Gomatz, Zaide and sympathetic guard Allazim (Jacques Imbrailo) plan their escape. Act Two sees the hapless lovers recaptured and condemned to die. This is yet another superlative addition to Ian Page’s period ensemble Classical Opera’s critically acclaimed complete cycle of Mozart operas. The brilliance of the orchestral playing is established from the beginning with a highly dramatic reading of an overture lifted from Mozart’s incidental music to Thamos, König in Ägypten. Those following British soprano Sophie Bevan’s stellar career will find nothing to disappoint, while arias such as Gomatz’s Rase, Schicksal, wüte immer (Fury, destiny, keep on raging) allow Clayton to demonstrate his own mastery of early Classical…

Musical delights from Australia’s premier player of the recorder.

Taking their name from Rameau’s opéra-ballet Les Surprises de l’Amour, this talented, young French ensemble now turns their attention away from the subjects of their debut recording, Rebel de père en fils and François Francœur, to tackle Michel-Richard Delalande and André Cardinal Destouches’ opéra-ballet for Louis XV, Les Éléments.First performed at the Tuileries in 1721 but enjoying considerable popularity beyond the court in the following decades, Les Éléments comprises a prologue, four sung entrées with danced divertissements and a concluding chaconne. Jean-Féry Rebel composed his own extraordinarily original 1737 creation ballet Les Éléments (not recorded on Les Surprises’ previous release). But the present opéra-ballet is full of vivid instances of word-painting too, from the subtle melismatic treatment of passages involving undulating waves or the flying of arrows to the more startling howling and crashing of wind and thunder. Les Surprises’ harpsichordist and Director, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, has again chosen to use chamber-sized forces throughout, focusing on instrumental colour – recorders, transverse flutes and oboe are particularly effective here – and the rapid, highly dramatic execution of dance rhythms and rhetorical gestures more potently to illustrate the brilliance of this work.

Following on from her superb 2008 recording of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin, harpsichordist Winsome Evans also follows in the footsteps of Bach and his contemporaries by devising “keyboard transcriptions of all these solo works emulating Bach’s stylistic textural idioms, compositional procedures and performance practices.” Evans’ copious liner notes demonstrate an extraordinary erudition, an absolute fidelity to Bach’s musical language and an uncompromising attitude towards surmounting every difficulty. She has availed herself of as many 18th-century compositional and performing techniques as she thought necessary to produce a convincing, historically informed realisation of these masterworks, including frequent sharing of melodies “across and between the hands”, composing new bass lines and countermelodies, filling out harmonies and, of course, extensive ornamentation, more often written-out rather than extemporised. And the performances? They are sublime: intimate and urgently expressive, with tasteful use of rubato and colour changes, in the slower movements such as the allemandes and sarabandes; joyful and exuberant in the faster dances such as the courantes and gigues. Together with the performing scores, both sets of recordings comprise a major contribution not just to contemporary Bach scholarship and performance, but to the enjoyment of lovers of Bach’s music everywhere.

Bologna’s musical history is a particularly rich and cosmopolitan one, and this recording by Roman period instrument ensemble Musica Antiqua Latina brings together the music of some of the Baroque composers associated with the city. There is a trio sonata by Giovanni Battista Bassani, long thought to have been Corelli’s teacher (though this is unlikely). A fine ciaccona by Maurizio Cazzati, who as maestro di cappella of St. Petronio had such an effect on the development of music in Bologna. Two trio sonatas from the famous Opus 3 and a ciaccona by Corelli himself, who studied in Bologna as a young man before moving to Rome. A trio sonata by Giovanni Maria Bononcini, whose son was a member of St. Petronio’s orchestra. A sonata by Giuseppe Torelli, whose Bolognese music for trumpet in particular is well known. A balletto by the Bolognese cello virtuoso Domenico Gabrielli. Another balletto by Giovanni Battista Vitali, also a Bolognese cellist of some repute who strongly influenced the development of the trio sonata. Finally, there is a delightful trio sonata by that most prolific of composers, ‘anon’. Founded by Giordano Antonelli in 2000, Musica Antiqua Latina also comprises four baroque violinists – one of whom…

Young Swedish instrumentalist Jonas Nordberg (I hesitate to call him merely a lutenist, as he plays everything from the Renaissance lute to the 19th-century guitar) has already proven himself a formidable musical and dramatic collaborator – witness his work with recorder player Dan Laurin and, separately, with choreographer Kenneth Kvarnström. However this, his debut solo recording, demonstrates for those who have yet to hear Nordberg in recital, just what a gifted poet of the lute and theorbo he is. Indeed, one need only read his booklet notes to get something of the measure of his refined, somewhat melancholy, sensibility. Of Dufaut’s Tombeau de Mr. Blancrocher, he writes, “As the piece develops, however, unexpected harmonies appear like fierce stabs of pain. At some points the music is still as a millpond; at others, it seems as frustrated as a prisoner trying to break free from the chains of death.” But the performance is the thing, and if Nordberg cannot yet count himself as a member of that pantheon of players which includes such luminaries as Rolf Lislevand, Fred Jacobs, Nigel North and Hopkinson Smith, he’s well on his way to reaching the summit of Mt Parnassus. One only has to listen…