Complete catalogue

Twenty-Five (DVD)

After a break from the Chopin Op. 10 études and Godowsky studies, David Stanhope returns to some of the most fiendish piano repertoire: the Godowsky Studies on Chopin's Études, Op. 25.

David Stanhope returns to the keyboard for some of the most technically fiendish piano repertoire: Godowsky’s Studies on Chopin’s Études, Op. 10. Written to open up new possibilities of pianism, they still astonish modern listeners.

I Was Dancing with a Gnat: Music by Ekaterina Komalkova

Duo pianists Aura Go and Ian Munro bring the music of Russian composer Ekaterina Komalkova to Western listeners for the first time in this generous collection of eighty re-imagined national songs.

Porgy & Bess Fantasy: Music for Two Pianos

In the early 1980s two of Australia’s finest pianists joined forces in masterpieces of the piano-duet literature. The set draws on concert and studio sessions from a period when such collaborations were still readily captured.

David Stanhope: Live in Concert

In an era of ubiquitous digital streaming, it is good to be reminded of the energy and excitement of live performance. This concert, with its scintillating late-Romantic repertoire, recalls what a diet of studio recordings can leave out.

Pearl of May

Satsuki Odamura and her Koto Ensemble return with new Australian works for koto by Sandy Evans and Ian Cleworth, and a solo bass-koto piece by Mark Isaacs. The title marks her thirtieth anniversary in Australia.

In Memoriam

Roger Smalley AM (1943–2015) shaped contemporary composition in Australia. This project grew from his dual gift as a virtuoso pianist and as a composer of visceral solo piano music.

The Emerald Phoenix

In 2014 Tall Poppies released The Emerald Leopard (TP233), with Brooke Green’s music for soprano and viols. The Emerald Phoenix presents her recent works for soprano, viols and theorbo, featuring Josie Ryan and bass violist Laura Vaughan.

After Julia

After Julia gathers eight contemporary works by Australian women composers responding to Julia Gillard’s tenure as Prime Minister. Decibel Artistic Director Cat Hope was spurred by the gender discrimination around that prime ministership, and by what it revealed about politics and the new music sector.

David Pereira Cello Works

Tall Poppies is proud to present the first recording of David Pereira’s compositions for cello. Written over twenty years, these works show a clear understanding of the instrument and often a mischievous side rare in classical music today.

Blue Sky Through Still Trees

Vanessa Sharman returns to the piano music of Tasmanian composer Don Kay in this second volume, with Sonatas Nos. 7 and 9. Recorded in the Salon at Melbourne Recital Centre, her playing catches the delicacy and emotion of these works.

W. F. Bach & J. G. Müthel: Complete Works for Two Fortepianos

Fortepianists Geoffrey Lancaster and James Huntingford join forces on a landmark Australian early-instrument recording: the complete works for two fortepianos by W. F. Bach and J. G. Müthel, played with rare virtuosity and stylistic insight.

Le Tango Perpetuel

Ian Munro, superb pianist and imaginative composer, turns piano masterworks into chamber colour for the Australia Ensemble. The disc also preserves a rare late performance by tenor Gerald English in Satie’s Sports et Divertissements.

Galop!: Virtuosic Orchestral Transcriptions

Stanhope is one of the very few Australian composers who takes on the challenge of transcribing piano works for orchestra. Composers once did this themselves to open other performing paths for popular pieces. Imagination, craft and creativity make the results thrilling.

Australian Premières, Vol. 2

This CD proves a concerto can be recorded with a soloist and a digital orchestra, and at the same time brings to light four remarkable works never recorded before, two of them never performed. Patiently languishing in archives, they can now see the light of day.

Bushfire Dreams

Four marvellous works by Melbourne composers appear here in superb performances by the Ormond Quartet, resident at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music between 2016 and 2018. Lotte Betts-Dean joins them for Katy Abbott’s work.

Dracula

Not only a world premiere, but the first opera commercially presented with a digital orchestra: David Stanhope’s Dracula, with two companion works.

Two Step

Recorded in Berlin, Brisbane and Tel Aviv, this is a truly international project. Cathy Milliken, an Australian oboist and composer based in Berlin, works with some of the finest contemporary performers available.

Mozart: Sonatas K. 570, 282, 333

Geoffrey Lancaster returns with three Mozart keyboard sonatas on fortepiano. His earlier Tall Poppies set of the K. 330–332 group had already won strong critical notice.

Australian Fantasia: Orchestral Works by David Stanhope

Orchestral works by David Stanhope and four of his transcriptions, realised with a digital orchestra. Apart from Olympic Fireworks, written for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games opening ceremony, these scores had not been heard in public performance.

From the Hungry Waiting Country

Three astounding works by Elliott Gyger are presented by Halcyon, featuring the thrilling voices of Jenny Duck-Chong and Alison Morgan with some of Australia’s best performers. Challenging music that rewards every listen, full of mystery and glistening textures, its narrative holds you to the end.

SPACE

One work by Colin Bright, written for his Syzygy Band of outstanding improvising musicians. The score is printed in the booklet, so listeners can follow the notated passages and the points where the ensemble takes over in improvisation.

Transformation: Music for Percussion, Piano and Electronics

Roger Smalley was one of Australia’s most respected composers. He eschewed popular styles and left an oeuvre that is both thrilling and challenging, always at the highest musical level.

Australian Premières, Vol. 1

None of these three Australian symphonies has ever been heard in public. Once you know them, their neglect is hard to explain. David Stanhope’s digital orchestra gives the scores a first hearing and makes their musical worth plain.

In Other Words

Violinist Anna McMichael and pianist Daniel de Borah devised this programme of transcriptions, two of Australia’s most accomplished chamber musicians. They play the music with virtuosity and style.

Haydn: Seven Last Words of Christ

One of the most extraordinary of Haydn’s late works. Five versions exist, including the original orchestral score; this keyboard version was prepared by his publisher Artaria and thoroughly approved by the composer. Full of passion and contemplation, it receives a superlative performance.

Diamond Morning

Two pianos and (maximal) minimalism. This recording celebrates musical minimalism – and its ability to move in time, space and memory – in a maximal way.

The Sonata Project

Bernadette Harvey performs four large-scale solo piano works: Aristea Mellos’s three-movement Sonata, Melody Eötvös’s two-movement Piano Sonata No. 1, Jane Stanley’s Piano Sonata framed by Prelude and Postlude, and Ross Edwards’s Sea Star Fantasy.

This Moment Must Be Sung: Chamber Songs of Andrew Schultz

A special recording of chamber vocal music by Australian composer Andrew Schultz. Halcyon—Alison Morgan and Jenny Duck-Chong with a fine instrumental ensemble—has championed his writing for one and two voices across two decades.

Christine McCombe: Three Kinds of Silence

Christine McCombe is a Melbourne-based composer, teacher and writer. This disc gathers four of her chamber works in world premiere recordings, and is the first CD devoted to her chamber music.

Music for Percussion and Electronics

Western Australian percussionist Louise Devenish, known for work with Decibel, Speak Percussion and The Sound Collectors, recorded this programme from her Music for One Percussionist recitals (2012–14). The composers are award-winning middle-generation Australians whose music is heard nationwide.

Mozart: Keyboard Sonatas, K. 330-332

By 2017 Geoffrey Lancaster was deep into the fifth decade of his performing career. Tall Poppies first recorded him in Mozart in 1991, accompanying the Song Company on Mozart Unexpurgated. A quarter-century later he returns to the composer with three of the best-loved keyboard sonatas.

Immersion

Six musicians journey into an exploration of darkness and light, immersing themselves in an unknown landscape. Wholly open to acts of transformation upon their psyches, they sink into an abyss of dreams.

Home by Eleven

Mix't Trio’s debut gathers all-Australian cross-genre chamber works that braid classical, Latin, African and jazz colours, with Paul Tanner on percussion, Adam Pinto on piano and Matt Styles on saxophones.

RockPoolMirror

Sandy Evans loved Belinda Webster’s dawn photographs of Shoalhaven Gorge from the early 2000s. A Tasmanian supporter funded the project; Evans wrote music to be heard with the images; and an eclectic circle of friends agreed to play and record it.

Il Diavolo

Accademia Arcadia, founded by harpsichordist Dr Jacqueline Ogeil, presents Italian baroque violin sonatas with improvising violinist Davide Monti, a regular guest with leading early-music ensembles.

Yakiya

Yakiya is the debut album by Melbourne trio Tripataka. Original compositions draw on the band’s deep engagement with the music of North and South India, Bali, Brazil, Cuba and related traditions from around the world.

Amatorios

Soprano Rebecca MacCallion joins Guitar Trek’s Bradley Kunda in a programme for voice and guitar. The pair made their ensemble debut on ABC Classic FM’s Sunday Live and took their work to audiences in Australia, Spain, Montenegro and Italy.

The Prospect and Bower of Bliss

The Prospect and Bower of Bliss presents two song cycles by Australian composer Johanna Selleck, setting poetry by Aphra Behn (1640–1689) and Melbourne poet Graeme Ellis (1944–).

Mass of the Dreaming

It is remarkable that 2016 brought the first recording by an Australian choir devoted entirely to Australian sacred choral music. This disc fills that long gap with newly commissioned and recent works.

Joseph Haydn: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 4

Tall Poppies and fortepianist Geoffrey Lancaster continue their survey of Joseph Haydn’s complete keyboard sonatas. He gave the full cycle of 52 sonatas in concert in Melbourne, Perth and Canberra for the 2009 bicentenary, and records them on period instruments from Australian collections.

Midnight Songs

Three is a Melbourne-based trio of trumpet, trombone and guitar. With little extant repertoire for this combo, the group commissioned four Melbourne composers and pairs those works with Jane Hammond’s arrangement of Percy Grainger’s Random Round.

Kingfisher

This CD is the result of a daring project to commission 21 composers to write new works for Halcyon's two singers, Jenny Duck-Chong and Alison Morgan. Presented over two concerts in their 15th anniversary year, and then recorded at Trackdown.

Val Gavin: Song Offerings

World premiere recordings of two Val Gavin song cycles: A Shropshire Lad and Song Offerings, sung by her son, the internationally acclaimed tenor Julian Gavin, with her daughter May Gavin at the piano.

History Goes Everywhere

austraLYSIS Electroband occupies a special place in Australian music. Formed in 1990 by Roger Dean, this trio has carved out a unique territory, pitting acoustic instruments against computer-generated material in live performance.

The Emerald Leopard

Josie and the Emeralds pair acclaimed early-music soprano Josie Ryan with some of Australia’s finest viol players, the Emerald City Viols. Founded in 2011, the group is known for sophisticated performances and inventive programmes of Renaissance and contemporary works, including compositions and arrangements by director Brooke Green.

Gabriel's Message: Cantigas de Santa Maria, Vol. V

The Renaissance Players, directed by Winsome Evans, was founded 48 years ago at the University of Sydney. It has a nucleus of nine to ten musicians (singers and instrumentalists), varied according to the needs of particular performances.

Cantigas de Santa Maria IV: Pillar of Wisdom

The Renaissance Players, directed by Winsome Evans, was founded in 1966 at the University of Sydney. A flexible nucleus of nine or ten singers and instrumentalists is shaped to each programme.

TEN

Making a welcome return to the keyboard, David Stanhope tackles some of the most technically fiendish repertoire in the piano literature – Godowsky’s Studies on Chopin’s Études Op. 10.

Pilgrimage to Montserrat

The Renaissance Players, directed by Winsome Evans, was founded in Sydney in the mid-1960s. A nucleus of nine to ten singers and instrumentalists expands or contracts to suit each programme.

Close Your Eyes and I'll Close Mine: Lullabies Old and New

Lullabies (or berceuses) have been around as long as humans have been singing their children to sleep. This CD presents a unique collection of mostly modern lullabies, many written for this project.

Inspirations

They say there is nothing new under the sun. New works of art challenge this notion. In this piano recording by Ian Holtham, all the works, commissioned from his Melbourne composer colleagues, are responses to major works in the piano literature. Something new has arisen, phoenix-like, out of something old.

Multi-Piano: 1978–2012

It’s a rare thing to showcase a performer’s work across forty years. This two-CD set does just that for Roger Dean, whose serious career in improvisation spans performances and books on the subject.

Paul Terracini: Music for Brass

Paul Terracini, himself a top-notch trumpeter, had been quietly writing beautiful works for brass ensemble in the years before this 2015 recording. Performed around the world, they are captured here by the venerable Sydney Brass with the composer conducting.

One

Claire Edwardes is one of Australia’s most charismatic performers, and this is her third solo CD for Tall Poppies. Her first (Coil, TP193) gathered important Australian works; her second (Flash, TP215) mixed children’s-piano miniatures with new commissions and won the 2012 Art Music Award for Excellence.

Blue Silence: Australian Music for Cello and Piano

This is the first disc of its kind released in Australia: an overview of important works for cello and piano spanning 108 years. The earliest is Grainger’s Scandinavian Suite, a tour de force that deserves a place in the concert hall.

Six Fish

Guitar Trek began in 1987 and broke new ground for the guitar with a special “family” of instruments: standard guitars by Greg Smallman, treble guitars by Eugene Philp and Greg Smallman, and baritone and bass guitars by Graham Caldersmith.

Mantras and Night Flowers

One can be sure that Australian music might be finally coming of age when one record label can contemplate a third recording of a recent piano work – Carl Vine's magnificent Piano Sonata No. 1 is now released for the third time by Tall Poppies.

Romantic Rarities

Ian Holtham is a distinguished Melbourne pianist with a long discography of Classical and Romantic repertoire, especially Chopin. On his first Tall Poppies release he turns to relatively rare works from the piano literature.

Osanna

A second Tall Poppies disc of Clare Maclean’s a cappella choral music. Few Australian composers have built so sustained a body of unaccompanied sacred and poetic works, shaped by her faith and her years singing with the Sydney Chamber Choir.

Ensemble Liaison: Bruch, Brahms, Beethoven

This is Ensemble Liaison’s debut CD. Formed in 2006, the group was Monash University’s Ensemble in Residence, had performed throughout Australia including for Musica Viva, and had appeared on ABC-TV’s Sunday Arts programme.

Joseph Haydn: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 3

Tall Poppies and fortepianist Geoffrey Lancaster continue their survey of Joseph Haydn’s complete keyboard sonatas on period instruments.

Flash: Marimba Miniatures

Flash is Claire Edwardes’s second Tall Poppies recording: a warm programme of marimba miniatures drawn from her pianist beginnings and life with two young daughters, pairing new Australian works with transcribed children’s piano gems on the five-octave marimba.

Barber & Debussy

David Berlin’s debut recital gathers gems of the 20th-century cello repertoire. The Barber and Debussy sonatas stand among the instrument’s masterpieces, while Bloch, Falla and Granados complete a programme long favoured in the recital room.

Especially... 7 Pieces for Harp

Alice Giles is unquestionably Australia’s finest harpist. First Prize at the 8th Israel International Harp Contest at twenty-one launched a solo career that has taken her around the world, with many works written expressly for her.

Alternating Currents

Bernadette Harvey’s debut solo CD on Tall Poppies presents one of Australia’s finest pianists: scarily accurate technique, a fearless ear for nuance, and a gift for making a composer’s intentions clear at first hearing.

Across the Top

Paul Cutlan is one of the very few Australian composers who works in the overlap between classical and jazz. Here he finds an ideal partner in the NOISE quartet, which extends its performance techniques with improvisation.

Don Kay: Bird Chants

Don Kay is an Australian composer from Tasmania with a substantial body of piano music. This collection gathers works written over ten years from 1998, each shaped by the personality of a particular pianist.

The Waltz Book

The Waltz Book is an impressive achievement by any standard. Andrew Ford has composed a set of 60 waltzes to a commission from pianist Ian Munro, organised so that they are exciting and make a coherent whole.

Joseph Haydn: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 2

2009 marked the bicentenary of Joseph Haydn’s death. To commemorate the anniversary, Tall Poppies and fortepianist Geoffrey Lancaster began recording Haydn’s complete keyboard sonatas on period instruments.

The Metallic Violins

This CD is crammed with world premiere performances and scintillating playing. These two violinists inspired wonderful new works by Australian composers, yielding the first recording of Australian music for two violins, from Hindson’s raunchy title piece to Finsterer’s dreamy Spherica I.

Peter Sculthorpe: The String Quartets, Vol. 3

Tall Poppies presents this third volume of Peter Sculthorpe’s string quartets as a tribute on the occasion of his 80th birthday in April 2009.

Abrazo Tango

Seductive and tantalising, this is the embrace of the tango: saxophones fused with the gypsy romance of the accordion. The sensual chemistry evokes the streets of Argentina, as played by these remarkable musicians.

Bolmimerie: SHE

SHE is the only harp septet in the world, and this is its first recording.

On Fire: The Sydney Concert

Tall Poppies is proud to release this fine recording of the Bruce Cale Quartet: Dale Barlow (flute and saxophones), Roger Frampton (piano), Bruce Cale (bass) and Phil Treloar (drums), each an exceptional creative musician. Recorded in 1980 at the Sydney Musicians’ Club, these performances document a unique musical journey.

Bright Vessel

Tall Poppies is proud to release Bright Vessel, an important collection of Australian works for solo oboe and oboe d’amore, gathered and performed by Stephen Robinson.

Joseph Haydn: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 1

In the bicentenary year of Joseph Haydn’s death, Tall Poppies and Geoffrey Lancaster begin a complete survey of the keyboard sonatas, opening with three middle-period works on fortepiano.

Merry-Go-Round

Australia's foremost chamber group meets one of the country's most engaging composers. Martin Wesley-Smith draws on politics (East Timor, Afghanistan), Lewis Carroll, and personal tributes to Don Banks and Peter Platt.

Sydney Brass Plays Stanhope

David Stanhope has been writing music for brass ensembles for over 30 years. The works are performed widely and remain a favourite of brass players around the world.

David Lumsdaine: Complete Music for Solo Piano

Tall Poppies presents the complete solo piano music of Australian composer David Lumsdaine. Spanning nearly thirty years, these works chart the shifting concerns of a major compositional voice rooted in landscape, history and birdsong.

Raymond Hanson: Violin Music

Raymond Hanson (1913–1976) is one of Australia’s most neglected composers. His music is rarely heard in concert, and even more rarely on disc. Access to the scores is part of the problem: most of the works recorded here survive only in manuscript in the Sydney Conservatorium library.

Slow Food

Food and music are true companions, yet they rarely meet in the music industry. This CD is a collaboration between composer–pianist Elena Kats-Chernin and her friend, chef Kylie Kwong.

Kaleidoscope

GEST8, the brainchild of Sandy Evans and Tony Gorman, extends their search for new colours in improvisation and jazz. Kaleidoscope is the band’s debut recording.

Trio Sonatas

Four of Australia’s foremost early musicians join forces for Baroque trio sonatas by Corelli, Purcell and Leclair, in a programme that spans Italian, English and French styles.

Coil: Australian Music for Solo Percussion

Claire Edwardes had already marked the Australian contemporary music scene after the ABC Young Performer of the Year award in 1999 and the Freedman Fellowship in 2005. Back from European study and performance, she was active in new-music ensembles and building a solo career.

Christmas to Candlemas

Ensemble Gombert is one of Australia’s finest choral groups. Directed by John O’Donnell – organist, harpsichordist and highly respected academic – the ensemble is known for historically informed performances of Renaissance and later choral repertoire.

Tall Poppies CD Sampler

This sampler was produced in late 2006 to complement Tall Poppies’ new full-colour catalogue. Its 26 tracks sample 26 recent CDs, presenting whole works or complete movements from larger pieces.

Carl Vine: The Piano Music 1990–2006

This is the first complete recorded collection of Carl Vine's piano music, including the world premiere of The Anne Landa Preludes (2006). Michael Kieran Harvey, who premiered both sonatas and the Piano Concerto, brings a long association with the composer to these performances.

Cafe Fiddle

After the success of his Tall Poppies Brahms sonatas with Milton Kaye, Australian violinist Ben Breen reunited with the veteran pianist for a second disc. Recorded near the end of Kaye’s life, it became the last chapter in the accompanist’s long recording career.

Bruce Cale: Orchestral Works

Tall Poppies is delighted to present Australian orchestral works that might well have slipped from view forever but for the archives of their composer, Bruce Cale.

Nigel Westlake: The Hinchinbrook Riffs

Tall Poppies presents The Hinchinbrook Riffs: five chamber works by Nigel Westlake, whose amiable, approachable style has won him a wide and loyal audience in Australia and beyond.

Blue Rags

Ian Munro plays contemporary piano rags by Elena Kats-Chernin, Ann Ghandar and himself, with Graeme Koehne’s Blues and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky’s composer-portrait Silhouettes.

Lest We Forget: A Manifest of Struggle and Hope

Welcome to the world’s first “classical” protest CD. The music ranges widely across Germany, France, England, Austria, Poland, Chile, the USA and Australia, touching world wars, the Holocaust, dictatorships and the stolen generation. It is a no-holds-barred plea for humanity to recover humanitarian values before it is too late.

A Virtuoso Recital: David Stanhope Piano

This is the third solo CD that David has recorded for Tall Poppies (see also Virtuoso Transcriptions, TP088, and David Stanhope Plays, TP135). The centrepiece is Rachmaninoff's Preludes, Op. 32, which he plays magnificently.

Water Settings: Australian Music for Percussion Duo

Match is a new Australian percussion duo featuring two of the country’s finest players: Daryl Pratt, Head of Percussion at the Sydney Conservatorium and a prolific composer, and Alison Eddington of Synergy Percussion. Most of the programme is by Pratt.

Sonic Stones

Sonic Stones presents two sides of austraLYSIS’s computer-mediated practice. PianoStones is a fully composed digital work that transforms natural stone sounds and pre-recorded piano by Dean into a continuous sonic field.

Chamber of Horrors

Tall Poppies presents chamber music by Elena Kats-Chernin, one of Australia’s most loved composers, in works written for the musicians who play them here.

Electric Cello

David Pereira plays solo Australian cello works, each scored for cello with pre-recorded tape or delay. The Wesley-Smith and Ford pieces are world premiere recordings.

Woman's Song: Australian Settings of Poetry by Judith Wright

Elizabeth Campbell has long been a tireless promoter of Australian art song. With Tony Fogg in the 1980s she presented the recital series From Nathan To Now; two decades later she brought that energy to a recording of settings of poetry by Judith Wright.

Fretsongs

David Malone teaches guitar at the Tasmanian Conservatorium and is in demand as a recitalist. He encourages local composers to write for his instrument, and this debut solo disc is the fruit of that work: a fresh, lively survey of Tasmanian music that gives him room to show his virtuosity.

Sandra France: Fluctuating States of Calm

Chamber music by Sandra France, performed by musicians largely based in Canberra. Sandy lived and worked there with a distinctive lyrical voice; this disc offers a clear introduction to writing that deserves a wider hearing.

Musica Viva: 60th Anniversary, Selected Commissions 1975–2004

This disc marks sixty years of Musica Viva Australia’s work commissioning Australian chamber music. Since 1945 the organisation had helped bring nearly a hundred new works into being, building a distinctive national repertoire. A full list of those commissions is included with the CD.

Bruce Cale Quartet Live

Tall Poppies releases a fine live document of the Bruce Cale Quartet: Dale Barlow (flute and saxophones), Roger Frampton (piano), Bruce Cale (bass) and Phil Treloar (drums). Captured at the 1980 Adelaide Festival of Arts, the set traces a distinctive creative path.

Down Longford Way: The Music of Katharine Parker

Katharine “Kitty” Parker (1886–1971) grew up near Longford in northern Tasmania. After early studies in Melbourne she became Percy Grainger’s pupil; he thought her the best student he ever had.

Handel: Italian Cantatas

Melbourne ensemble Arcadia specialises in baroque cantata repertoire. Here they bring fire and passion to five of Handel's Italian cantatas: virtuosic music, beautifully performed.

Brahms Violin Sonatas

Tall Poppies is proud to release this fine recording by talented young Australian violinist Ben Breen, then living in New York as a musician and sommelier. Breen has a special affinity with the Brahms sonatas, and here teams with veteran American pianist Milton Kaye.

Andrew Schultz: Suspended Preludes

Andrew Schultz, then Professor of Composition at Wollongong University, is a prolific composer with a large body of chamber music. This second Tall Poppies volume gathers nine works, performed by Australian musicians.

Pratt's Alchemy

Percussion compositions by Daryl Pratt, one of Australia’s finest vibraphonists in classical and jazz settings, and a sought-after general percussionist.

Mirrors of Fire

Every now and then a CD comes along that makes you glad to be alive: the music is so infectious and the performances brilliant. This is one such disc, featuring Timothy Kain, Australia’s virtuoso guitarist.

Searching: Yearning for the Bell, Vol. 7

Riley Lee completes his survey of the Japanese meditation melodies, or honkyoku, for shakuhachi. The pieces were recorded in the sumptuous acoustic of the Australian National Acoustics Laboratory reverberation room. Riley sounds as if he is floating.

Phoenix Crying: Yearning for the Bell, Vol. 6

Riley Lee continues his survey of Japanese meditation melodies, or honkyoku, for shakuhachi. Recorded in the sumptuous acoustic of the Australian National Acoustics Laboratory reverberation room, the playing seems to float. The programme includes Lee performing both parts of the famous duet Nesting of the Cranes.

Bach for Christmas

Celebrate this Christmas with Bach. For the first time, all of Bach’s organ music for Christmas is gathered on a single CD, chosen and performed by Australia’s John O’Donnell, a world-renowned Bach specialist.

Claude Debussy: Piano Music, Vol. 4

This is the fourth and final disc in Roy Howat’s complete Claude Debussy piano music. The major works are the Arabesques, Suite bergamasque and Children's Corner, with early pieces and a world-premiere Intermède.

Claude Debussy: Piano Music, Vol. 3

Roy Howat continues his survey of Claude Debussy's piano music, eventually to occupy four CDs. Book 1 of the Préludes is the main offering, and Howat's performances allow us to hear these pieces in a new light.

The Scented Garden

Recorded just before her untimely death in early 2003, this CD is a heartfelt testament to Jann Rutherford, one of Australia’s truly individual voices in jazz.

Still Life: Australian Music for Viola

This is the third solo viola disc on Tall Poppies, and one of the few such albums ever issued in Australia. Patricia Pollett is widely regarded as among the country’s finest musicians, and the violist who has done most to draw new works for the instrument.

Fantasies

Dutch-born Esther van Stralen, principal violist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, shapes this recital from her own wide-ranging tastes: earlier works on baroque viola sit beside a broad sweep of twentieth-century solo writing.

Landscape's Creatures

A collection of recent Australian choral music, mostly by younger composers. It is good to see that choral writing is alive and well in Australia. Each work makes a strong statement, with a variety of choral techniques and styles.

The Spritely Ones

Judy Bailey has long been regarded as one of Australia's foremost jazz pianists. A formidable composer as well, she presents only original works on this solo programme.

Tall Poppies 10th Birthday Sampler

The works on this CD have been chosen to highlight the performers and composers whose work has been recorded and released by Tall Poppies over the last four years. In many ways this choice has been a personal one, but I have also tried to sample the many series of CDs that Tall Poppies has initiated over the last ten years.

Buxtehude: Cantatas

This CD is a must for Buxtehude fans, with five works not then available on disc. Arcadia is a new Melbourne ensemble formed to explore early vocal works.

Rautavaara: Cello Music

All of these cello works by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara appear here in world premiere recordings. Spanning nearly fifty years of his writing, they chart the major compositional influences that shaped his craft.

Recital: Australian Art Song

Merlyn Quaife (soprano) and Michael Kieran Harvey (piano) present a recital of Australian art song spanning the twentieth century, from Percy Grainger and Fritz Hart to Keith Humble and David Horowicz.

The Inner Line: Music for Piano 4 Hands

Stephen Emmerson taught piano at the Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane and Bernard Lanskey at the Guildhall School of Music in London, yet the two still met regularly to give piano four-hand concerts.

Acouslytic

Acousmatic and electroacoustic works from Roger Dean and Hazel Smith with austraLYSIS. Dean's music and Smith's words form a distinctive soundworld that challenges, inspires and intrigues.

Terrains: Piano Interiors

Michael Hannan performs Peter Sculthorpe’s piano-interior classics Landscape and Koto Music I & II alongside eight of his own works, built from layered, atmospheric textures drawn from inside the piano, often with tape and tape loops.

Deep Night: Yearning for the Bell, Vol. 5

Fifth in Riley Lee’s seven-CD survey of the complete lineage of 13th-century Japanese honkyoku—solo meditation pieces for shakuhachi. Lee was the first non-Japanese player to attain grand mastery of the instrument.

Icarus

The Icarus myth has long drawn Andrew Ford, and this disc gathers the works it inspired. The Kowmung Music Festival Players appear alongside Terra Australis, recorded at the Aspen Festival.

Carl Vine: Mythologia

Mythologia amazed audiences and critics alike at its Olympic Arts Festival debut in Sydney in 2000. Graeme Murphy's choreography was breathtaking, Carl Vine's score won widespread acclaim, and the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir's live performance placed the group firmly among international ensembles worth hearing.

The Potato Factory

The Channel 7 mini-series of Bryce Courtenay’s The Potato Factory screened in Australia in July 2000. With Lisa McCune, Ben Cross and Sonia Todd, it is a ripper yarn of Dickensian London and early colonial life.

Purple Black and Blues

Herself a pianist, Elena Kats-Chernin has built a substantial body of piano works. Expatriate Australian pianist Lisa Moore has long championed this music, and here gives vivid accounts of the major pieces, including Sonata Lost and Found, written for her and this recording.

Graeme Murphy's Body of Work: A Retrospective

For 25 years the Sydney Dance Company under Graeme Murphy dominated Australian dance. Murphy made it a mission to commission new Australian scores; this disc gathers some of the most successful, issued to mark a national tour celebrating his work.

Ann Ghandar: Piano Music

Ann Ghandar teaches composition at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales. A formidable pianist herself, she gave the first Australian performances of Messiaen’s Four Rhythmic Studies and of Ives’ Concord Sonata and First Sonata, and has presented many recitals worldwide.

Bach: The Cello Suites, BWV 1007–12

David Pereira gives a personal view of Bach’s six solo cello suites, works that remain the cornerstone of the cellist’s repertoire. He is only the second Australian to have recorded the complete set.

Lift Off: Australian Piano Music for Children

An engaging collection of piano music by Australian composers written to spark young imaginations. Elpis Liossatos, an Australian pianist then living in Greece, brings charm and enthusiasm to these performances.

There Came a Wind like a Bugle: Chamber Music by Nigel Butterley

Chamber works spanning some thirty years by Nigel Butterley, one of Australia’s finest composers, for soloists, song and choir.

The Ockeghem Legacy

A celebration of Ockeghem’s life and work. His death prompted many elegies, the most famous being Josquin’s Nimphes des bois. Every composer on this disc is said to have been present at his funeral in 1497.

Bach: Clavierübung III, Schübler Chorales & Canonic Variations

In this special Bach anniversary year, Tall Poppies presents the first of two offerings of his work. Clavierübung III is regarded by many as the pinnacle of Bach's work for organ.

Soundings: Electroacoustic Works 1955-1996

Tristram Cary has worked in electroacoustic music for half a century. This two-CD set offers a personal selection of landmark works from his London and Australian years.

Autumn Field: Yearning for the Bell, Vol. 4

The fourth of seven CDs presenting the complete lineage of thirteenth-century Japanese honkyoku, or meditation pieces, performed by Riley Lee, the first non-Japanese player to attain grand mastery of the shakuhachi.

Salzedo: Works for Solo Harp

Alice Giles is one of Australia’s finest musicians, and this disc gathers some of Salzedo’s seminal works for solo harp. Her beauty of tone and unabashed virtuosity bring clarity and vigour to the music.

Peter Sculthorpe: Music for Cello

The cello has been a major expressive tool for Sculthorpe throughout his career. Parting was conceived in 1947 and waited forty-eight years to appear in this form. The 1959 Sonata lay dormant after its premiere; its material later became the Sonata for Viola and Percussion.

David Stanhope Plays

David Stanhope is known throughout Australia as one of the few resident conductors of note. His talents are much broader: a prolific composer, especially of wind band music (see TP107), and a pianist of formidable technique.

Jamaican Rumba, Vol. 2

Pianist Ian Munro's devotion to Arthur Benjamin drives this second volume of chamber music, recorded with colleagues from the Tall Poppies Ensemble. Major and long-neglected works for violin, viola, cello and clarinet finally receive their due.

Red Earth

A world-premiere recording of important Australian works for instrumental ensemble. Performers and repertoire were hand-selected for the project, which was funded by the Australia Council.

Viva Sax!

Margery Smith is a Sydney-based saxophonist whose virtuosity meets the full range of this Australian programme, from mid-century sonatas to later works that lean into jazz, improvisation and ensemble colour.

Mozart & Brahms: The Clarinet Quintets

Catherine McCorkill joins the Australia Ensemble for two pillars of the clarinet chamber repertoire: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, on basset clarinet, and Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115.

Off the Beaten Track

A rare chance to hear such beautiful horn playing without the distraction of bass and drums. Rader and Frampton work beautifully together on original compositions, standards and new work improvised in the studio.

Australian Cello

Sydney-based Danish cellist Georg Pedersen’s first solo disc centres on three major Australian works for solo cello by Banks, Kos and Whitehead. The Kos and Whitehead pieces were written especially for him.

Harbour

This CD features the remarkable voice of the septuagenarian tenor Gerald English in works written especially for him by Andrew Ford. A star-studded gathering of musicians accompanies him and also plays three solo works.

Crossing a Bridge of Dreams

This CD gathers some of Anne Boyd's most enduring works, mostly from the 1980s. Many pieces reflect her passion for Asian music, heard especially in the flute writing. Premiere performers return for the recording, among them John Harding on viola in My Name Is Tian.

Raft Song at Sunrise: Chamber Music, Vol. 2

Following the best-selling first volume of Ross Edwards’s chamber music (TP051), this disc gathers some of his most enduring works, recorded here for the first time.

Discovery

Jann Rutherford is one of the most distinctive voices in Australian jazz. This debut solo album by the New Zealand-born pianist presents only original compositions, funded by the Emerging Artists Scheme of the Australia Council.

Larry Sitsky: Violin Concertos 1 & 3

Issued for Jan Sedivka's 80th birthday in 1998, this disc presents two Larry Sitsky violin concertos written for the Czech-born violinist who made Tasmania his home and inspired a generation of Australian players.

Claude Debussy: Piano Music, Vol. 2

Roy Howat continues his four-volume Debussy survey with Préludes Book 2, the early Images of 1894, wartime pieces and an unofficial second Suite bergamasque.

Sweeter than Roses

Some of Purcell's most famous songs are included in this collection, among them If Music be the Food of Love and Incassum Lesbia. John O'Donnell accompanies the renowned tenor Gerald English.

Johann Caspar Kerll

The late 17th-century composer Kerll left a large body of organ works, many recorded here for the first time by organist and harpsichordist John O'Donnell.

Carl Vine: Chamber Music, Vol. 2

World premiere recordings of Carl Vine's Second Piano Sonata, played by Michael Kieran Harvey, and Third String Quartet, by the Tall Poppies Quartet (John Harding, Georges Lentz, Esther van Stralen and David Pereira).

Romancing the Oboe

Oboist David Nuttall and guitarist Timothy Kain turn romantic miniatures into a warm chamber programme. Familiar favourites sit beside Brazilian sambas and Nielsen’s incidental music.

Empty Sky: Yearning for the Bell, Vol. 3

Volume 3 of a monumental seven-CD set. Riley Lee, the first non-Japanese grand master of the shakuhachi, presents the complete lineage of the orally transmitted 12th-century Japanese meditation melodies known as honkyoku.

An Australian Collection

Nineteen tracks drawn from the Tall Poppies catalogue, chosen to show the range and depth of Australian composition and performance across the label’s first decade.

Margaret Sutherland: The Chamber Music with Strings

World premiere recordings of marvellous chamber music by one of Australia's neglected composers. Margaret Sutherland (1897–1984) studied with Arnold Bax in the 1920s and returned home to write some of this country's most original and striking works.

The Selfish Giant: Ballet Music

Graeme Koehne is among Australia’s most successful ballet composers. Work for the Sydney Dance Company in the 1980s opened a distinguished career in the form. The Selfish Giant, written for that company, appears here complete.

Horn Trios

A dazzling trio in horn trios by Banks, Berkeley and Brahms. Anyone who caught their Australian performances in 1998 will know how wonderfully these musicians work together.

A Garden of Earthly Delights

Three Australian concertos in exuberant performances by the Australian Youth Orchestra, conductor Diego Masson, and soloists David Nuttall, Ian Munro and David Pereira.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks: The Songs

World premiere recordings of songs by Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, including the cycle Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, sung by tenor Gerald English.

Quito

A powerful radiophonic music drama about Quito, a young East Timorese musician living in Darwin, whose schizophrenia and suicide become a lens on personal and political tragedy.

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

The complete Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach, played by Nicholas Parle, an Australian harpsichordist who lived in Europe.

Present Tense

An unusual release of music improvised live with computer-generated improvisations. Sandy Evans is astonishing here. Roger Dean has provided most of the germinal material.

Gates Beyond

Waters lived in Switzerland but returned regularly to Australia for concerts. These works had long been in his solo recital repertoire, and the performances show the wisdom he had attained.

Little Ripper!

David Stanhope’s wind-band music was taking the band world by storm. His main influence is Grainger, yet as a horn and trombone player he brings a sharp ear for what truly works for band.

Passion Fruit

Guy Strazzullo is one of the rising stars in the Australian jazz firmament. His guitar playing is awesome – strong and vital, equally at home with the classical repertoire as the improvised.

Jamaican Rumba, Vol. 1

Recorded for the first time, this is a comprehensive overview of the piano music of Arthur Benjamin, an Australian composer who spent most of his life in Europe and whose work has long been neglected. Ian Munro plays with an astonishing affinity for the music.

Kodály: Piano Music

This CD gathers almost all the piano music of Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály. Wisps of folk melody and doleful eastern European harmony colour these pieces, still rarely heard in the concert hall.

Cello

Howard Penny had lived in Vienna for fifteen years, returning periodically to Australia. Here he plays a selection from the modern solo cello repertoire in performances of real conviction and focus.

Bamboo Grass: Yearning for the Bell, Vol. 2

Volume 2 in Riley Lee’s seven-CD survey of the complete lineage of medieval Japanese meditational honkyoku. Solo shakuhachi, recorded in the reverberation room of the National Acoustics Laboratory.

Carl Vine: Inner World

Written especially for David Pereira, Inner World pairs live cello with a tape part drawn only from his own playing. Vine transforms that material into an integrated accompaniment. Australia's first classical CD single.

David Malouf Reads from Poems 1959–89

By the mid-1990s Malouf was among Australia's best-known writers, his poetry somewhat overshadowed by the novels. These studio readings remain intimate and inviting, the poet's own voice carrying the work.

Powerful Medicine

One of Australia's most interesting jazz groups plays original material that is rhythm-rich and performed with virtuosity and style.

Viola Power

It's hard to imagine a CD of Australian music for the viola, but here it is. From Grainger's chirpy love song through Ross Edwards' intricate dance to Peter Sculthorpe's masterful work with percussion.

Meditation

The Grand Organ in Sydney Town Hall is a vast romantic instrument, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. It might seem an unlikely choice for this ethereal French music, among the greatest ever written for the organ, yet in the right hands it reveals many subtleties.

Uluru: New Solo Cello Works for David Pereira

Twelve new Australian solo cello works written for David Pereira, celebrating the handing back of Uluru to its traditional Indigenous owners. Responses range from didgeridoo-like sonorities in Hopkins to the modernism of Dean.

In the Pipeline

An improvising contemporary trio of trombone and two percussionists, Pipeline presents a major work from each composer–performer, linked by free studio improvisations.

Claude Debussy: Piano Music, Vol. 1

The first of a four-CD set of Debussy’s complete piano music, played by Roy Howat, an internationally respected scholar of this repertoire.

39 Dissonant Etudes

Each etude lasts about a minute and a half and explores a different division of the octave, from 5 to 43 notes. Produced entirely by computer, the set makes for fascinating listening.

Australian Soundscapes: Lake Emu

Lake Emu is a flood lake on the Darling River in far west New South Wales, in Kinchega National Park. River Red Gums and Black Box were recorded along the Darling. Both sites hold an abundance of birdlife.

Australian Soundscapes: Mutawinji

Field recordings by David Lumsdaine capture one of the most extraordinary bird songs on disc: pied butcherbirds at Spirey Creek in the Warrumbungles, with further bush soundscapes from the sacred site of Mutawinji in far western New South Wales.

Peter Sculthorpe: The String Quartets, Vol. 2

The Goldner String Quartet, the string players of the Australia Ensemble at the University of NSW, presents this historic survey of Sculthorpe’s string-quartet oeuvre, available as a set on CD for the first time.

Peter Sculthorpe: The String Quartets, Vol. 1

The Goldner String Quartet — the string players of the Australia Ensemble at the University of NSW — presents this historic first volume, making Sculthorpe’s substantial body of string-quartet writing available on CD for the first time.

Virtuoso Transcriptions

These ‘one take’ studio recordings were made for ABC broadcast about a decade before release. That they stand as a finished album is a tribute to David Stanhope’s prodigious musicianship and technique.

Mozart: Quartet KV 465, Quintet KV 516

Recorded in the spacious drawing room at Melbourne's Government House, this disc was sponsored by the Sydney Mozart Society.

A Day in the Life of a Clarinet

Peter Jenkin presents the clarinet in its many modern guises, equally at home with Alban Berg, multi-tracked Bach, klezmer, tango, jazz and electronics.

The Edge

This music was written for an IMAX film about the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. The film concerns itself with the environment, the ancient Aboriginal presence and the recently discovered prehistoric Wollemi Pines.

Works for Viola and Orchestra

Patricia Pollett's debut solo disc makes a strong case for the viola beyond the usual elegiac repertoire, pairing orchestrated Romantic sonatas with Bruch and a new Australian work.

Australian Soundscapes: Cambewarra Mountain

About two hours south of Sydney lies Kangaroo Valley, rising at its eastern end to Cambewarra Mountain. Lush rainforest and cedar forest shelter an astonishing array of birdlife, among them whipbirds and lyrebirds.

Songs With Mara

The music originated as the score for Meryl Tankard's Australian Dance Theatre show of the same name. Mara and Llew Kiek perform and arrange this mostly traditional Bulgarian repertoire.

Alkan & Magnard

Continuing her Alkan series, Stephanie McCallum takes on the monumental Symphony from Alkan’s Opus 39, with his slightly mad Chanson and the world premiere recording of Magnard’s Promenades.

Mere Bagatelles

As an overview of Australian composition in the 90s, this CD could not be bettered: a musicianly survey of short piano works, with performances of real authority.

Schubert's Unfinished

Few pianists can complete Schubert’s unfinished piano works with real authority. Ian Munro brings compositional craft to the task, and plays with precision, clarity and insight. This is the first of two discs devoted to the repertoire.

Cello Rhapsody

Pereira's main strength is his passion, heard here in repertoire that ranges from the simplicity of songs to the dramatic nuance of the Hispanic rhapsodies.

The Secular Josquin

Nicholas Routley brings a lifelong love of Josquin to his work with The Song Company. This programme of short secular songs and motets offers an unusual window on a repertoire less often heard among recordings of the composer.

Piano Sonatas Opp. 109, 110, 111

Stephen Savage, English-born and long based in Queensland, brings a deep personal attachment to Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas. These affectionate readings have drawn considerable critical praise.

Cello Dreaming

Pereira has inspired more new works for his instrument than any other Australian musician. This is his first solo CD of works mostly written for him, and the first of three such discs then planned. His performances are powerful and persuasive.

Watt Ever

Electronic music drawn from twenty years of WATT concert presentations. Australia’s only organisation regularly staging audio-visual and electronic works, WATT gathers tape, computer and live-electronic pieces spanning that period, bringing several composers to CD for the first time.

Clare Maclean: Complete Choral Music

Maclean began her choral life as a singer in this choir, and her writing shows an intimate grasp of its style. The result is gorgeous listening: music inspired by the spiritual, and a distinctive voice amid the noise of contemporary composition.

Wattamolla Red

By the mid-1990s Wesley-Smith had been composing electronic music for more than twenty-five years. The work stays accessible and human; anyone who thought electronics belonged only to specialists will find that view overturned here.

Awakening

Marshall McGuire is a formidable asset to Australia’s contemporary music scene, and the only harpist specialising in both baroque harp and all forms of modern music. This Tall Poppies disc remains a catalogue best-seller.

Mozartrois: The Complete Piano Trios

Recorded in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, this two-disc set is a landmark Australian account of Mozart’s piano trios, and includes the seventh and most recently identified work of the group.

Spinning: New Australian Flute Music

Geoffrey Collins has single-handedly shaped the Australian flute repertoire, and this is his third solo recording. Five of these works were written for him, and they show how freely composers respond to his playing.

John Lemmoné: The Flute Music

Lemmoné was Dame Nellie Melba’s accompanist and musical director. He wrote very much in the style of the day, with an eye to his audience and a willingness to provide flashy displays of technique—good taste, it appears, was never a burning issue.

Violin Recital

Marina Marsden, then Deputy Concertmaster of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a seasoned chamber player, brings faultless technique and real insight to these less familiar corners of the violin repertoire.

Janáček: Piano Music

Lisa Moore breathes fresh life into these Czech piano masterpieces. Less familiar on the concert platform than his operas, Janáček's keyboard writing ranges from darkly brooding to cheerful dancing, with all the drama of one of the twentieth century's most-loved opera composers.

Andrew Schultz: Chamber Music

Andrew Schultz is a younger Australian composer. This first disc devoted to his music gathers chamber works from the rollicking solo piano Sea-Change to the dramatic ensemble piece Mephisto and the poignant song cycle Dead Songs.

The Green CD

In a climate of rising concern for the planet, this programme of Australian choral works turns on nature and protest. Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin? stands as a landmark of Australian choral writing, and one of its most popular.

On Our Way: Haza is Kéne Már Menni

If you like Hungarian and Romanian folk music and dance, this is your CD. The Transylvaniacs play traditional Hungarian music from Transylvania, with Romanian and Gypsy tunes among the twelve tracks. Violin, cimbalom, viola, double bass and voice lead the ensemble’s own arrangements.

Piano Recital

In her sixties when this disc was made, Mary Warnecke had already been a force at the keyboard before marriage and children ended her performing career, as they so often did then. She returned with an intensely personal style.

Travelling On

Indian classical colours and jazz meet in capable hands on this intriguing mix. Guy Strazzullo stands out as one of Australia’s most individual guitarists, and as a composer of real character.

Voices

Composer–pianist Roger Smalley presents a personal recital of lean, often quiet Australian piano works from the 1960s and 1970s, many appearing on CD here for the first time.

Night People

An unusual disc and a claimed world-first: an entire album for solo five-string electric bass. Steve Hunter’s instrument gives him wide creative range, and this is a true solo recording, with some pieces multi-tracked.

A Patchwork of Shadows

In 1994 Ian Munro was one of only two or three major pianists based in Australia. Passionate about the music of his composer peers, he shaped one of the most carefully chosen programmes then available on disc.

Harpsichord Recital

In the mid-1990s Nicholas Parle was living and working in Europe from financial necessity, but returned each year to perform and record in Australia. This was his first CD for Tall Poppies, a popular selection of favourite harpsichord works.

Souvenir

An engaging collection of violin and piano works, several drawn from the Australian Music Examinations Board violin syllabus, spanning salon pieces, spirituals and early Mozart.

Alkan: Twelve Studies in All the Major Keys, Op. 35

Alkan's monumental Twelve Studies in all the Major Keys, Op. 35, is a virtuosic tour de force for the pianist. Each study develops an aspect of technique, yet each is pure Alkan – millions of notes and thunderous drama. McCallum has been praised worldwide for her Alkan performances, with prodigious technique and poised musicianship.

Josquin

Nicholas Routley has made a speciality of this Renaissance repertoire, and the Sydney Chamber Choir sings it magnificently. Recorded in a small chapel with a perfect acoustic, Josquin's music has rarely sounded so alive.

Andrew Ford: Whispers

The highlights of this disc are the works written for tenor Gerald English. Its success led to a further project in 1998 gathering all the works Ford had composed for him.

Shostakovich

Two of Shostakovich's most powerful and popular chamber works, given hair-raising performances by Australia's finest chamber ensemble.

Ecstatic Dances: Chamber Music, Vol. 1

One of Tall Poppies' most successful releases, this collection of Ross Edwards's chamber music sets his meditative sacred style beside the buoyant energy of his Maninya pieces.

The Next Room

An unusual two-CD set of free improvisation: each disc holds one continuous hour-long piece. Tony Buck, Roger Dean and Sandy Evans are sharply different musical personalities, yet the long-form dialogues hold together.

Retrospect: Pre-War Australian Miniatures

Larry Sitsky is known throughout Australia as a composer. He is also one of the finest pianists, and he has a healthy respect for the work of his fellow Australians. Here he plays pre-war miniatures with evident affection.

Incredible Floridas

Two of Australia's finest chamber works by one of its leading composers. Richard Meale shows two major strands of his style: the coruscating drama of Incredible Floridas, a homage to Rimbaud, and the more harmonically romantic String Quartet No. 2.

Onomatopoeia

Long-awaited performances of Nigel Westlake’s most acclaimed chamber works, with outstanding Australian players. One of Tall Poppies’ most successful releases.

Christmas Day

Ranging from a cappella singing to full orchestral colour, these carols make an ideal gift for music-loving friends. The programme is mostly modern, yet warmly listenable.

The Country of Here Below

Ruined pianos? True – and some ruined accordions. Ross Bolleter's taste in found musical objects is given free rein here, the gathered sounds lightly shaped in the studio into results like nothing you have heard before.

Like a Bird

Odamura's first CD, made after she settled in Australia in 1989 and brought the koto into contemporary performance here. Her playing is dramatic and engaging, joining traditional and modern techniques with equal conviction.

Points of Departure

Perihelion, the Brisbane chamber group of clarinet, viola, piano and cello, built its repertoire largely through commissions. This disc gathers some of the ensemble’s most successful new Australian works.

Horn Concertos

Hector McDonald, then Solo Principal Horn of the Vienna Symphony, joins the Academy of Melbourne under Brett Kelly in a programme of horn concertos by Haydn, Förster, Telemann and Teyber.

Schumann: Complete Works for Oboe

Two Canberra colleagues whose tastes aligned present the most complete set of Schumann’s works for the oboe—and of pieces not written for it. Sitsky, better known as a composer, contributes his transcription of the neglected pedal-piano Etudes.

Stroke

A striking programme of contemporary Australian piano music, superbly played by New York–based Australian pianist Lisa Moore. Smetanin's formidable title work, among the most demanding in the repertoire, was captured here in a single take.

Windows in Time

austraLYSIS is the brainchild of Roger Dean, and exists in several incarnations, including a live electronics band. Here they are in their standard chamber music format and have chosen a programme in which the linchpins are Xenakis and the music of New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell.

Flying

AtmaSphere is a Sydney jazz band specialising in virtuosic performances of its own works. Some tracks carry a Zen calm; others offer sheer pleasure from more notes per second than seem possible. Guest spots by Don Burrows and Mike Nock heighten the pleasure.

Notations

Stephanie McCallum is a Sydney-based pianist who specialises in contemporary music. Her performances bring light and colour to these works. Music by Xenakis and Boulez sits well beside a generation of Australian composers.

Ocean Flows

Rik Rue clambered around Sydney’s seaside rockpools in the early morning to gather the material for this recording. Intimate, sometimes funny and spectacularly well captured, the sounds build an entire dramatic scenario from a complex web of sonorities.

"Caeli enarrant..." IV & V

Georges Lentz, then a violinist in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, had already won the Paul Lowin Award for Orchestral Composition for another work in this series. His music draws on astronomy and carries a vast sense of space.

Machine for Making Sense: On Second Thoughts

Twenty-six short pieces lettered A to Z. By 1994 Machine for Making Sense had toured worldwide for several years. The five players weave dense, highly textured material that fuses music and text in startling ways.

Water Music: Shakuhachi

Twelve remarkable shakuhachi improvisations, recorded in a water-storage reservoir that serves inner Sydney.

Prokofiev & Carter: Cello Sonatas

David Pereira and Lisa Moore, winners of the ABC Australian Record of the Year for The Wild Russians (TP017), bring the same shared vision, ensemble polish and passion to two cornerstones of the cello and piano repertoire.

Enchanted Dreams... Exotic Dances

Geoffrey Collins and Alice Giles have played together since their school days. Their partnership works at an international level, and this carefully chosen programme shows their complete accord while avoiding the clichés often tied to flute and harp.

Synergy With Samuels

This CD grew from a concert collaboration between Australia’s best-known percussion quartet and America’s finest vibraphonist, Dave Samuels. Together they cook up a storm.

Mozart: The Wind Quartets

The Australia Ensemble, with Geoffrey Collins (flute) and David Nuttall (oboe), play Mozart’s four flute quartets and the Oboe Quartet. The recording was the Recommended Performance in the 1995 Gramophone Good CD Guide.

Artisans Workshop

Artisans Workshop is a Brisbane-based group of young jazz musicians long used to working as one. That ease shows, and the sparks fly throughout this astounding debut. John Rodgers stands out as one of the most exciting violin improvisers anywhere.

Wish

Best known for her work with the medieval ensemble Sinfonye, Stevie Wishart is also a scintillating improviser. Here she gathers long-time collaborators for an unusual set of free improvisations and studio pieces.

The Martenitsa Choir

Formed by Mara Kiek in the early 1990s, this choir has mastered the Bulgarian choral singing style. Here they perform with gusto and precision. The music will knock your socks off!

John Cage: Works for Prepared Piano

Nigel Butterley is well known as one of Australia’s finest composers. He was also an accomplished pianist, and by this 1993 release had been performing these Cage works for more than twenty years. Critics have long praised the style and colour he draws from the prepared piano.

The Battlers: Music from the TV Mini-Series

This music originated as the soundtrack for a television mini-series. Easy on the ear, it shows Vine as a consummate film composer, with a gift for mood that is an outstanding feature of the disc.

Schumann: Lieder

Gerald English, then in his seventies, was still singing magnificently. Here he joins Perth-based pianist and composer Roger Smalley, whose work as an accompanist is little known. This is the first of several Tall Poppies projects featuring English.

Mozart: Sonatas for Fortepiano

Three Mozart fortepiano sonatas from Geoffrey Lancaster, first-prize winner at Bruges and a forthright, well-researched voice who has long unsettled early-music orthodoxy in Australia.

Rita Hunter in Concert

Rita Hunter is one of the great unsung heroines among sopranos. This live London concert from the 1970s catches her at her best in a programme of variety and passion.

The Hands the Dream

Sydney pianist Daniel Herscovitch specialises in contemporary repertoire. This debut disc presents solo piano works he has chosen by six Australian composer colleagues.

Roger Frampton: Pure Piano

Another in the series featuring this major jazz pianist. In free improvisations he shapes moods that hold the listener’s imagination, inviting comparison with the solo work of Keith Jarrett.

Shostakovich & Schnittke: The Wild Russians

This CD won the inaugural ABC award for Best Australian Recording in 1993. It is a vibrant, fresh account of two major works by the Russian masters Shostakovich and Schnittke.

Only Cello

David Pereira, Australia's leading cellist, plays three masterworks of the solo cello literature, including Peter Sculthorpe's Threnody, written to commemorate the Australian conductor Stuart Challender.

Christmas under Capricorn

The Australian Youth Orchestra, conducted by Graham Abbott, plays nineteen Christmas carols arranged for orchestra by Australian composers. Two carols appear in paired settings, inviting comparison. Listenable festive music, easy to give as a gift.

Breath-Sight: Yearning for the Bell, Vol. 1

The first disc in a seven-CD survey of the medieval shakuhachi lineage of meditational melodies known as honkyoku—the first time this complete body of music has been recorded. Riley Lee’s playing is exceptional throughout.

The Eagle and the Ocean

Riley Lee is a master shakuhachi player, and this disc is the fruit of a studio meeting with guitarist Geoff Ween-Vermazen: a set of ambient-style improvisations. Definitely soul-food here.

Carl Vine: Chamber Music, Vol. 1

A first gathering of Carl Vine's chamber works from the 1980s. Intelligence, wit and feeling sit side by side, played by leading Australian musicians, many of them in pieces written for them.

Antarctica: The Film Music

Australia's first IMAX film, scored by Nigel Westlake with music that captures the awesome spaces of the ice and the delights of the local fauna. Soloists include David Pereira (cello), Dene Olding (violin), Timothy Kain (guitar) and Christine Douglas (soprano).