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Presto News - 6th September 2010Puccini's forgotten masterpiece - La Rondine |
 It seems strange that a mature masterpiece from one of the world’s most celebrated operatic composers could be largely unknown, but that is the opinion of soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna on Puccini’s La Rondine, whose 2009 production from the Metropolitan Opera is due to be released on DVD next Monday on EMI. I’ve been watching it myself this weekend and I have to say I tend to agree with them - it is full of fabulous music and dramatic tension and it is hard to understand why it was ignored for most of the twentieth century.  Angela Gheorghiu in La Rondine The opera had a difficult start. It was commissioned by Vienna’s Carltheater and the idea was for Puccini to write an operetta. Puccini instead agreed to write a comic opera in the style of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, only “more entertaining and more organic”. It is an unusual story, particularly for Puccini, with no great tragic ending, and no deaths, but it is still very dramatic and there is plenty of musical colouring to get you drawn into the emotions of the characters. Puccini’s major publisher Ricordi had wanted the composer to write a national epic rather than what he considered “Viennese whipped cream” and as a result wanted nothing to do with the work. It turned out to be the only Puccini opera which Ricordi didn’t publish and the early reception is likely to have suffered from the lack of the publisher’s significant publicity machine behind it. Furthermore the outbreak of the First World War made a Viennese premiere impossible and the subsequent switch to Monte Carlo certainly didn’t help the opera receive a sympathetic response - the French press hammered it and the Italians didn’t like the fact that it was all happening outside Italy anyway. After this poor start the opera quickly fell out of the standard repertoire, but thankfully over the past ten years or so it has started to make a comeback. Gheorghiu and Alagna’s studio recording in 1996 proved a launch pad and since then most of the world’s major opera houses have raised productions. One of the last to do this was the Metropolitan Opera in New York which gave its first staging for 70 years on New Year’s Eve 2009. The new DVD mentioned earlier was recorded 11 days later and it is hard to imagine a better version. Gheorghiu is at her sumptuous best and is undoubtedly the star of the show but the orchestra, under Marco Armiliato are also superb, and again I find myself praising Roberto Alagna, who like in his Don José from Carmen (which I talked about two weeks ago), in Ruggero finds a role which he performs both highly musically and utterly convincingly. Much to recommend this then, and also at a really excellent price. I’ve put a short video trailer on the website to give you an idea.
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 Puccini: La RondineAngela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, Lisette Oropesa & Marius Brenciu, Orchestra & Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera, New York, Marco Armiliato |
Chris O'Reilly - chris@prestoclassical.co.uk |
Watch a short promo videoNew Releases6th September 2010 |
This is just the pick of the recent releases. The New Releases and Future Releases pages are always available for browsing all the new and forthcoming releases. |
 Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn & Symphony No. 10 (Adagio)Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano) & Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Cleveland Orchestra, Pierre BoulezPierre Boulez adds the two last missing bricks to complete his Mahler discography on Deutsche Grammophon. Recorded live in concert with the Cleveland Orchestra, the program brings together the early orchestral song cycle from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, featuring mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and baritone Christian Gerhaher, with the late Adagio of Mahler’s fragmentary Symphony No. 10. The concert took place only a few months before Gustav Mahler’s 150 Birthday. The concert is also part of the celebrations of Pierre Boulez’ 85th birthday this year. |
 Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (complete)Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano), BBC Philharmonic, Gianandrea NosedaThis is the first concerto recording by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet for Chandos. Following the tremendous success of his complete Debussy piano music edition (‘This could well be the finest and most challenging of all Debussy piano cycles’ – Bryce Morrison, Gramophone) which scooped awards from both Gramophone and BBC Music, and the launch of his ambitious Haydn Piano Sonatas series, the pianist now turns his attention to some of the mightiest concertos of the twentieth century. The three Bartók Piano Concertos on a single CD represents superb value for money. |
 reVisionsSteven Isserlis (cello), Tapiola Sinfonietta, Gábor Takács-NagySteven Isserlis has earned a reputation as one of the foremost cellists of our day. At the same time he has become known for his ingenuity and innovation in programming, something of which this disc is the perfect example. It combines four works for cello and orchestra all arranged at his personal request, and each of them by the arranger of his choice. |
 Josef Suk: Orchestral WorksBBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiří BělohlávekFollowing the success of his Serenade in E flat, Suk wished to take up the challenge of writing a symphony, influenced as he was by the contributions to the genre of his own teacher, and of Brahms. Suk’s First Symphony was actually begun in London in 1897 and completed two years later. This new CD provides an excellent opportunity to hear the rarely recorded early work, with its fresh melodic appeal and inventive orchestration. |
 Korngold: String Quartets Nos. 1, 2 & 3Doric String QuartetMost famous for his lushly romantic film scores, Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote a quantity of music for the concert hall, the stage, as well as three highly individual string quartets between the years 1920 and 1945. Korngold was one of the great prodigies in the history of classical music, and by the time he started work on his First String Quartet (completed 1923), he had already written what many consider to be his magnum opus, the opera Die tote Stadt. The three quartets range widely in style and are all very appealing. The First is notable for its strikingly adventurous harmony, the Second (1933) for its sheer wealth of melodic appeal, whilst the Third (1945) uses material from his film scores, and is as varied and dramatic as many of the films which he scored. |
 Mozart: Mass in C minor, K427 'Great'Gillian Keith (soprano), Tove Dahlberg (mezzo soprano), Thomas Cooley (tenor) & Nathan Berg (bass-baritone), Handel and Haydn Society, Harry ChristophersMozart’s Mass in C minor is one of the best-known and most widely performed of the composer’s mass settings and is generally considered to be one of his greatest works and, as such, is often referred to as the ‘Great Mass’. Unlike many of his other works the Mass was not a commission and Mozart wrote it purely for his own pleasure. It is a remarkable union of musical vision and religious text and draws on Mozart’s skill for drama that made his operatic works such a phenomenal success. |
 Respighi: Concerto in Modo MisolidoOlli Mustonen (piano), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sakari OramoThis new recording features star conductor Sakari Oramo and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra with two Italian masterpieces by the late-Romantic composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936). The symphonic poem Fontane di Roma remains one of Respighi’s most popular works and forms part of his Roman Trilogy. Each movement depicts one of Rome’s fountains during different periods of the day and night, while the work as a whole showcases the centuries-old Italian marriage of culture, art, and worldly pleasure. The discovery piece on this disc, the monumental Concerto ‘in the Mixolydian mode’, deserves more widespread introduction into the standard repertoire; its title refers to the work’s majestic main theme that is derived from medieval plainchant. |
 Mahler: Songs with OrchestraSusan Graham (mezzo-soprano) & Thomas Hampson (baritone), San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson ThomasMichael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony bring their historic Mahler recording cycle to a close with the composer’s three song cycles. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, who launched their historic Mahler recording cycle in 2001, complete the best-selling, critically acclaimed and award winning project with the composer’s atmospheric song cycles. The live recordings, taken from concerts in the orchestra’s Davies Symphony Hall, features two of America’s most lauded singers, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham in Rückert-Lieder, and baritone Thomas Hampson in Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and selections from Das Knaben Wunderhorn. |
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