Fine Music Magazine

The February issue of the 2MBS Fine Music Sydney Magazine has just been released. You can read the entire magazine through our website! This month we take a look at Simone Young, Lloyd Swanton of The Necks, as well as Jacques Ibert: A Composer To Whom All Systems Were Valid. You can also get access to this months program guide so you don't miss your favorite show!

Fine Music Magazine

Guides to the greatest classical music of all time will routinely praise some of Schubert’s symphonies, piano music, chamber music and songs. They never direct our attention to his operas, yet these take up more space in the complete edition of his works than any other form in which he wrote.

Fine Music Magazine

During the 1890s, the young Jean Sibelius was associated with the nationalistic-cultural group Nuori Suomi, or Young Finland, which promoted Finnish distinctiveness free from the cultural dominance of Sweden and Russia. The Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela was a founding member of Nuori Suomi and enjoyed a creative friendship with Sibelius.

Fine Music Magazine

On one occasion in 1954, at an inadequately heated Sydney Town Hall, Isaac Stern, playing a “great deal of Bach”, had to rush backstage between every movement to immerse his hands in hot water. Despite this and the fact that, at another concert, proceedings were temporarily halted by a chirping cricket, Mary Cleveland, wife of the US consul, felt that attending all eight of Stern’s Sydney concerts “was one of the great musical experiences” of her life.

Fine Music Magazine

Written by Anne-Louise LuccariniBorn in Modena on 18 July 1670, 350 years ago this month, Giovanni Bononcini was the firstborn...

Fine Music Magazine

One larger-than-life character dominates the stage in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and in a very well-known opera by Verdi. Almost 100 years before, Salieri wrote his version of this comedy with its finale of shenanigans in Windsor Forest when the merry wives are the victors over a jealous husband and the would-be seducer, Falstaff. Salieri’s Falstaff opens the 2022 year of Wednesday night operas.

Fine Music Magazine

“I am the apotheosis of world creation. I am the aim of aims, the end of ends.” It might be thought appropriate that a man who could give these words to the autobiographical hero of his opera had been born (according to the Julian calendar,

Fine Music Magazine

Is it possible to write a brief article about Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, a seminal collection of 24 preludes and fugues in every major and minor key, for the 300th anniversary of its completion in 1722? It's like being asked to mention the greatness of Shakespeare or of Van Gogh – the achievement is too great, too multi-faceted and so full of the summit of human genius that it defies adequate description. Surely the very attempt must involve a narrowing of focus, thus diminishing the complexity, richness, and subtlety of the whole? However, if these few words of mine pique the curiosity of even one reader enough to explore these works, that will be enough!

Fine Music Magazine

Born in 1877, it didn’t take too long into Dohnányi’s career for him to realise that he was politically denigrated by the Communists and artistically shunned by the western avant-garde. The truth was that even as a young composer, he was utterly conservative. What he had learnt in the conservatorium was good enough for him; he was no innovator and Brahms was God as far as he was concerned.

Fine Music Magazine

First there was Domenico Dragonetti. Though the double bass had been developed before 1600, it took a couple of centuries for a virtuoso on the instrument to make his mark. One observer remarked that “Dragonetti remains supreme and uses his instrument as Jupiter his bolts – now hurling the thunder, and now glancing the innocuous lightnings of heaven – for thus only can we describe the alternate succession of his powerful and delicate execution.”