Nicolai, C O: Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor overture (The Merry Wives of Windsor)

During the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Decca recorded a number of albums with some of its key conductors of Overtures. Many of these were singled out by the press for their terrific sound quality (the fabled ‘Decca Sound’) and for their often adventurous programming. Some of them also included entr’actes and intermezzi. Prized as collectors’ items, many of the original LPs exchange hands at high prices. And most of these reissues, in Decca Eloquence’s ‘Romantic Overtures’ series appear in CD, in part or whole, for the first time.

Romantic Overtures – Volume 4 is a Viennese celebration with a violinist / conductor synonymous with the waltz and everything that was echt-nineteenth century Vienna: Willi Boskovsky. Boskovsky had a lengthy association with Decca, conducting for them not only a volley of ‘New Year’ recordings of waltzes, polkas and marches by the Strauss Dynasty, but also the music of Mozart, and much chamber music too, with the Vienna Octet. At the centre of this collection is his fabled LP ‘Overtures of Old Vienna’, and it goes on to include other overtures recorded as part of his New Year albums, all of it extremely stylish and ‘of the age’, as it were.

Recording producers: John Culshaw (La Princesse Jaune, Benvenuto Cellini, Si j’étais roi, Zampa, Donna Diana, Pique Dame, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Le Domino noir); Victor Olof (Masaniello, Le cheval de bronze, Fra diavolo, Les diamants de la couronne); James Walker (Le Corsaire, Le roi Lear, Le Carnaval Romain, Les francs-juges)

Recording engineers: Kenneth Wilkinson (La Princesse Jaune, Benvenuto Cellini) James Brown (Masaniello, Le cheval de bronze, Fra diavolo, Les diamants de la couronne); Roy Wallace (Le Corsaire, Le roi Lear, Le Carnaval Romain, Les francs-juges); Ken Cress (Si j’étais roi, Zampa, Donna Diana, Pique Dame, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Le Domino noir)

Recording location: La Maison de la Mutualité, Paris, France, June 1951 (La Princesse Jaune, Benvenuto Cellini), September 1954 (Masaniello, Le cheval de bronze, Fra diavolo, Les diamants de la couronne), June 1955 (Le Corsaire, Le roi Lear, Le Carnaval Romain, Les francs-juges), November 1957 (Si j’étais roi, Zampa, Donna Diana, Pique Dame, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Le Domino noir)

The recorded legacy of Albert Wolff is one of the most sought-after by collectors. Of Dutch parentage, but born in Paris, Wolff was something of a polymath: pianist, organist, conductor, composer, and had a long career in recording studios beginning in 1920. His first recordings for Decca, starting in the summer of 1951, were a complete Carmen (with Suzanne Juyol), a Manon (with Janine Micheau) as well as several French orchestral suites and individual pieces. ‘Overtures in Hi-Fi’ was the title given to a now ‘cult’ LP of Wolff conducting six overtures: Si j’étais roi, Le Domino Noir, Zampa, Donna Diana, Pique Dame and The Merry Wives of Windsor. To these are added a further ten overtures to make up this 2CD anthology.

Sir John Barbirolli’s full-blooded and dramatic performance of Puccini's Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut brings vividly into focus his Italian blood and background, inherited from a Venetian family in which both his father and grandfather were members of the orchestra at Milan’s opera house, La Scala. Others among the operatic overtures on this disc will be well remembered by Barbirolli admirers from his concerts, especially the Rossini pair and Oberon, the latter with its wonderfully delicate feeling in the introduction and strong vein of romantic ardour coursing through the succeeding allegro. Hansel and Gretel and The Merry Wives of Windsor were perhaps more rare, the latter often being reserved for one of his popular programmes of Viennese Music.

Barbirolli really relished these little overtures and preludes and he brought to them his characteristically elegant phrasing and lively rhythms; note his careful grading of the famous Rossini crescendos in Semiramide, the richness of the orchestral texture in Hansel and Gretel and the vigour and élan of the playing in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Of the four pieces included here unrelated to the opera house, two make their debut on CD. The Trumpet Voluntary recalls a much earlier Hallé record, made in Manchester’s old Free Trade Hall in 1927 under Sir Hamilton Harty, the Orchestra’s principal conductor from 1920-33.

The other title new to CD is his spick-and-span account of The Stars and Stripes Forever which gives the percussion players a chance to enjoy themselves. Elsewhere the Hallé strings, led by Laurance Turner (in his last season before retiring), properly reflect their conductor’s eloquent handling of Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile. Another Hallé stalwart who retired at the end of the same season (1957-8) was first clarinet Pat Ryan, whose many finely sensitive contributions can be heard throughout these performances, notably towards the end of Mendelssohn’s atmospheric portrait of the seas around Fingal’s Cave; all are typical of a quality of playing upon which Barbirolli had been able to rely ever since he re-formed the Orchestra in 1943. The previous two volumes in this series and available – Volume 1 (SJB1036) and Volume 2 (SJB1041).

The annual New Year’s Concert from Vienna, seen by millions on TV worldwide, is the best-known classical concert in the world.

Georges Prêtre returns to Vienna’s illustrious Musikverein to conduct a compelling programme that combines adored classics with no less than four intriguing premieres. Idolized in Vienna, the legendary French maestro, Georges Prêtre (who first came to eminence for his recordings with the great Maria Callas) is a leading expert on and interpreter of the music of the Strauss family.

Following on from the previous critically acclaimed CD (MDG6010832), MDG presents the next volume in this charming series.