Complete Overtures, Vol. 1 (Incls 'La Gazza ladra' & 'Semiramide')
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ROSSINI
Complete Overtures, Vol. 1 (Incls 'La Gazza ladra' & 'Semiramide')
Prague Sinfonia Orchestra, Christian Benda
[ Naxos / CD ]
Release Date: Tuesday 20 November 2012
This item is only available to us via Special Order. We should be able to get it to you in 3 - 6 weeks from when you order it.
"There's more sheer fun in the music making on this new release, a quality that's fully in evidence and
Rossini wrote some of music's most masterful and lovable operas. His gift for comic and tragic forms was matched by a relish for characterisation, qualities that are always evident in his overtures. La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) is perhaps the most famous, one of the world's most popular concert openers. But in Otello he reveals his more complex turns of phrase and in Le siège de Corinthe the writing is dramatic and colourful. The overture for Elisabetta, Regina d'Inghilterra was used again a year later by Rossini for Il barbiere di Siviglia. This is the first of four discs of the complete Rossini Overtures.
"Christian Benda's Prague Sinfonia has all of the discipline (of other versions) with an extra sprightliness and vivacity-bright piccolo and wind sonorities plus crisp percussion. There's more sheer fun in the music making on this new release, a quality that's fully in evidence and properly exploited, even in Rossini's most serious music (The Siege of Corinth, for example)...a wholly winning, very well engineered disc." (ClassicsToday Nov 2012)
"there's not quite enough spirit to make them special. But many of the pieces themselves are memorable" BBC Music Magazine*
"Benda and the Prague Sinfonia Orchestra's performances are an absolute delight, featuring playing that's bright as a button and droll as those Rossini caricatures one commonly sees plastered on program posters and album covers. This first volume affords both a strong start and a strong promise for the most comprehensive and important survey of Rossini's overtures since Marriner's 1970s effort.That's a definite recommendation." Fanfare
Tracks:
La gazza ladra Overture
Semiramide Overture
Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, Act I: Sinfonia
Otello, ossia Il moro di Venezia, Act I: Sinfonia
Le Siège de Corinthe Overture
Sinfonia al Conventello
Overture: Ermione (with Prague Philharmonic Choir)
