Octo_Russ

Rossini - Opera Overtures [Chailly-National Philharmonic Orchestra] 

I'm not a fan of Rossini's Operas, i think he has an overblown showy style, all virtuoso glitter and no substance, so take away his Operas, and what have you got left?, next to nothing, but he has one redeeming feature which makes me love him, his excellent Overtures, while say Verdi's Operas have a phenomenal lot more substance to them, yet he was poor-ish on the Overtures, Rossini creates here a set of 'rhythms & gears', he's the master of the Overture [along with Beethoven] as Strauss was of the Waltz, and it's good to have a double disc set of 14 Overtures, rather than the usual half dozen that you seem to get on every disc, with two discs Chailly ends up exploring some of the lesser known Overtures, and it's surprising that there's gems to be found everywhere, no filler on these discs!.

Riccaro Chailly is an Italian Conductor, born in 1953, these two discs are actually two separate issues, the first recorded in 1981, and the second in 1984, the front cover on this excellent Double Decca issue is a painting called 'The First Shot To Freedom' by William Shakespeare Burton. 

And it's the first disc which i found the most joy with [and which i listened to first], and the three Overtures which were especially exhilarating were 3 & 5-6, so it was good to hear this third Overture 'Il Viaggio A Reims' [The Journey To Reims], an Overture it was nice to acquaint myself with, as i don't know it very well, it starts off like a fair number of Rossini's Overtures, a good fanfare, and then some rather introductory music, and yet you just know Rossini, that he's building up to something with tremendous rhythms, there's a serenading oboe solo [1:05-1:34], and the flute also plays this selfsame solo tune [1:55-2:21], it takes Rossini three minutes before one of his simple waltz tunes come in [2:57+], and even then it takes times to build up into a complex motor rhythm, with lots of gears and levels, with bubbly woodwind [4:13-4:34], and then a lovely magic starts [4:34+], with a new bubbling rhythm, and this all starts again [5:51+], the last 3 minutes are superb, an Overture well worth getting to know.

Here's Peter Maag conducting the Overture to 'Il Turco In Italia' on YouTube.