There is no want for recordings of this opera, and several are terrific: Jennifer Larmore/Raul Gimenez (Teldec); Horne/Alva (Opera d'Oro); Horne/Ramey (Erato); Baltsa/Raimondi (DG). But there's always room for another if it's good, and this new release, recorded at the 2008 Wildbad Rossini Festival, is excellent--and the least expensive of them all.

The star here is Lawrence Brownlee, the superb coloratura-lyric tenor who is giving Juan Diego Florez a run for his money. Warm of tone, stylish, accurate, rhythmically impeccable, fearless of high notes, involved with the text, and capable of marvelous patter (his first-act duet with Mustafa is a gem), Brownlee is the best Lindoro on disc. He is given both of his arias, which he dispatches nimbly and naturally.

Almost as fine (behind only Samuel Ramey) is Lorenzo Regazzo's Mustafa, here portrayed not as a buffoon but as a man smitten and naive to the wiles of women. The voice is appealing, dark, and round-toned, and he sings the coloratura and patter handily. I like that he doesn't growl and yelp like most basses do in this role; he may be a tyrannical character but he's in a position of power and distinction. The other two low men's voices are equally good: Giulio Mastrototaro's Haly is colorful and self-assured, and Bruno De Simone's is the best Taddeo on disc. He has the Rossini style down pat and sings with impeccable diction. He doesn't sound young, but that's hardly an issue. Both men are fine in ensembles.

Marianna Pizzolato is a far lighter mezzo than we normally hear in this role. I guess in keeping with underplaying Mustafa's foolishness, we avoid having an Isabella who sounds as if she could conquer Algiers singlehandedly--as, say, Baltsa and Horne could. Pizzolato is more in the Teresa Berganza class (although the voice is not as lovely); there are no booming low notes, but she commands the role on her own terms. There's little to argue with vocally--she has the technique down pat--and she has a good sense of fun as well. Ruth Gonzales as Mustafa's poor, fed-up wife, Elvira, can be slightly shrill but is mostly an excellent part of the ensemble, and mezzo Elsa Giannoulidou holds up her end as Zulma.

Alberto Zedda, an old hand who can occasionally be more scholarly than entertaining, is at his best: zippy tempos prevail (in fact, the finale to Act 1 is faster than I've ever heard it--a remarkable example of how well rehearsed the performance is); vocal lines are ornamented wisely (not the old fashioned way, with big high notes at the end of arias and scenes, but rather within the numbers themselves); and the opera comes across as charming.

This work can seem like hectoring and can be somewhat cruel; the choice of singers, tempos, and overall outlook makes it concentrate on the love story and the peculiarities of East meeting West. The Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir, Cluj is superb, singing at times at a whisper very accurately and offering real personality, and the Virtuosi Brunensis plays with vigor. The recording is fine, with voices always audible and well-balanced. If you're in need of a L'Italiana, this one will please you, particularly at half the price of the others; otherwise the Larmore/Teldec release is the best cast, overall.

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

It took me only a few seconds of listening to realise that there was likely to be something special about this recording. The Overture is so well known and often played, but here it comes up with the kind of invigorating freshness and brightness that brings an immediate grin to your face. Partly this is due to the use of the recent critical edition by Azio Corghi, whose changes of flute to piccolo in the allegro section, and detailed changes of phrasing throughout are entirely for the better, but it is due even more to the sheer rhythmic grace and suppleness of the playing. Alberto Zedda may have been nearly 80 when this recording was made but you would never guess it from the results. The orchestra sounds to be of an appropriate size for the work – not on historic instruments, I understand, but certainly historically informed - and it has been recorded in an acoustic which appropriately feels like the kind of medium-sized opera-house that Rossini would have expected.

Apart from Lawrence Brownlee the cast is not as starry as other versions of the work, but what is much more important is that the majority of the soloists are native speakers of Italian and all have clearly been thoroughly rehearsed together as an ensemble. Brownlee sings with grace and manliness - an uncommon quality in this role. Bruno de Simone and Lorenzo Regazzo have voices which are clearly distinguishable from each other and both are masters of Rossini’s writing for comic basses. The ladies are perhaps less individual, Marianna Pizzolato in particular lacking the kind of vivid characterisation that we find in recordings with, say, Marilyn Horne or Jennifer Larmore. Nonetheless she sings with great beauty where required, and at all times communicates the dramatic situation to the audience. It is indeed this quality of communication which makes the recording special. There is no sense of a routine run-through; instead there is the freshness of apparent new discovery.

This is wholly appropriate as L’Italiana in Algeri was written when the composer was only twenty-one. He had written nine operas before it but here reveals himself for the first time as a complete master of writing for the stage and one determined to make this clear to the audience. The special merit of this performance is that the performers are clearly working as an ensemble. It was recorded at live performances but the only significant adverse effects are very occasional moments of ragged ensemble and the brief applause at the end of some, but not all, numbers. On the other hand the very positive effect is the palpable sense of involvement in the performance from everyone involved.

Naxos have recorded a number of Rossini operas at the Wildbad Festival already, but this is by some way the best I have heard so far. No libretto is included with the set and that on their website is in Italian only. There is however a detailed and helpfully cued synopsis which is some consolation - although in a comic opera you really do need to be able to understand all the words to appreciate it as the composer intended.

-- John Sheppard, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

We know very little about Ruiz Samaniego, Kapellmeister in Saragossa during the second half of the 18th century. However, he left an abundant music production, including some villancicos. These polyphonic vocal works of theatrical origin have been adopted by the Church to celebrate their main feasts. Sung in Spanish, not in Latin, they are built on a religious thematic, mostly in the form of dialogues and they frequently use musical elements of popular origin. Very little explored, the Spanish Baroque vocal music is a world of many rich artistic treasures that cry to be rediscovered. The villancicos of Ruiz Samaniego are undoubtedly part of these treasures, as witnesses of an artistic universe specific to Spain, in which spirituality and sensuality are irremediably fused.

Composed in 1824 by Hector Berlioz at the age of twenty-one and premiered at the church of Saint-Roch in Paris in 1825, the Messe solennelle has come down to us following an eventful history. After Berlioz declared that he had destroyed the score, the mass was considered lost until it was rediscovered in Antwerp in 1992. This remarkable work helps us both to appreciate the development of Berlioz's style- already revolutionary in his early years- and to understand what he owed to his contemporaries, notably Cherubini, whose monumental Requiem Herve Niquet has already recorded. Scored for three soloists, chorus, and orchestra, the work consists of thirteen movements, material from which Berlioz was to reuse in several later works, notably in the Scene aux champs of the Symphonie fantastique, which quotes the 'Gratias.' On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Berlioz's death, Herve Niquet, fascinated by this work- "There's nothing he doesn't know about dramaturgy and vocal style. At the age of twenty!"- decided to programme it (the concert at the famous Berlioz Festival of La Cote Saint-Andre was a memorable occasion) and record it in the Chapelle Royale of the Chateau de Versailles.

In the last of his three volume series devoted to Granados's orchestral music, two very different compositional strands are explored. The early Suite oriental reveals his sense of vivid orchestral color and melodic imagination, couched in the exotic language of the time. Written in a more pared-down style, the one-act "lyric poem" Liliana, a collaboration with the writer Apelles Mestres, is a four-movement suite in which Granados conjures up a vivid, mythical world. Elisenda is another impressionistic score, both emotive and ethereal, here performed in its arrangement for piano and chamber orchestra.

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REVIEW:

Pablo González and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra respond, as they have throughout this series, with warmth and an attractively natural sense of how to turn a phrase. The woodwinds are the real stars, though: supple oboes with just a hint of nasal buzz.

– Gramophone

Despite the scandal it created with first staged in 1875, Carmen has subsequently become one of the world’s most popular operas. The love affair at its heart shocked contemporary audiences but the music is imperishably vibrant and exciting- so much so that, after the composer’s death, his friend Ernest Guiraud arranged two suites from the opera. Here the Toreador’s Song and the graphically sensuous Seguidilla and Habanera dances are heard in all their orchestral glory. The two suites from L’Arlesienne containe music of great charm and refined elegance.

In 2013, Florian Uhlig released a recording with French Piano Concertos and it received excellent reviews from critics all over the world and became one of that year's bestsellers. Uhlig is here again, accompanied by the German Radio Philharmonic under Pablo Gonzales - a collaboration which already made his first recording a massive success. This album contains again, piano concertos by Ravel and Francaix, which supplement the concertos of the 2013 album, and rarely performed and very imaginative works for piano and orchestra with concert character by Germaine Tailleferre and Nadia Boulanger. Tailleferre's Ballad for Piano and Orchestra passed through different phases from 1920 - 1922, starting as a pure orchestral work, then becoming a solo piece, and then finally as work with concerto character in the final version. Boulanger originates from a musical family and is famous for her pedagogical passion. Among the concertos on this album, her work was inspired by her idols Cesar Franck and Sergei Rachmaninov.

17th and 18th c. musical Venice's legendary status was owed partly to the development and spread of the instrumental form known as the trio sonata. It's first great creator, the Italian Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli, was followed by such distinguished figures and fellow countrymen as Tomaso Albinoni and Antonio Vivaldi, both of whose cheerful, playful and profound efforts in this area are heard on this Genuine CD played by the Camerata degli amici, under the direction of the oboist Jaime Gonz�lez, a widely recognized chamber, soloist and orchestral musician.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Enrique Granados is known for composing some of the most popular Spanish piano masterpieces. Along with these famous compositions, he also wrote a sequence of orchestral works. Marcha de los vencidos, which is the first track featured on this album, evokes the emotion of the painful march of "the defeated" from a lost battle. This album is the first in a series to be released in honor of the centenary of the composer’s death. The compositions on this album are performed by the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pablo Gonzalez.

A storm of passaggi to echo the virtuosity of the cornettists of Renaissance Italy who exalted their instrument, of which Andrea Inghisciano is one of the most sought-after contemporary exponents (listen, for example, to the album ‘La Morte della Ragione’ with Il Giardino Armonico). Here, along with the keyboard player Maria Gonzalez, he presents a programme bursting with diminutions, whether written or improvised: from the acrobatics of Francesco Rognoni and Dario Castello to the sweetness of Luzzasco Luzzaschi and Giovanni Battista Bovicelli, by way of Girolamo Dalla Casa, who, while recommending performers to ‘do few things, but do them well,’ amazes us with his exuberant writing, with rapid cascades of notes as arduous to play as they are fascinating to listen to. This duo recital is the recording debut of the ensemble I Cavalieri del Cornetto, which aims to explore the art of diminution in all its forms.

Enrique Granados is best-known for his piano music, especially the ‘Danzas Españolas’ and ‘Goyescas.’ Little regard is given to his chamber music, songs and orchestral works. Earlier this year I reviewed Volume 1 of the present series of orchestral music for MusicWeb International and concluded that it was a worthy project that explored beyond Granados’s normal repertoire and I looked forward to hearing the second installment.

The CD opens with what is probably the only one of the composer’s orchestral works to become a hit – the ‘Intermezzo.’ It was derived from his opera Goyescas (1915), which was premiered in New York on 28 January 1916. It was a by-product of the great piano suite. The composer described his opera as displaying in the ‘rhythm [and] colour, a portrait of quintessentially Spanish life and a sense of emotion that leaps from the amorous to the passionate, the dramatic or even the tragic…just as in Goya’s works you find aspects of both love and tragedy, and both quarrels and flirtations.’ The delightful ‘Intermezzo’ was composed very quickly just before the premiere, to accommodate a longer than expected scene change between the first and second acts of the opera. Its mood is of passion, drama with a hint of sultry sunshine and romance in the ‘big tune.’

The delightfully named ‘Danza de los ojos verdes’ (Dance of the green eyes) was first heard in New York’s Maxine Elliot Theatre just a few days after the opera’s premiere. It was presented as a part of an ‘evening of dance’ performed by Antonia Merce (1890-1936), who was billed as ‘La Argentina.’ The present short dance was written for, and dedicated to, Merce. It is an uncomplicated little piece that uses the usual ‘mechanics’ of a Spanish dance – tambourines, castanets, and ‘gypsy tinged orientalism’. It is a magnificent little tone-poem that depicts the flamenco celebrations in the Sacromente district of Granada.

The mood of celebration continues in the Danza gitana (Gypsy Dance), which was composed in 1915 and was dedicated to the dancer Carmen Tórtola Valencia (1882-1955). It is full of vibrancy, instrumental colour and Iberian rhythms. The liner notes point out that the composer used a large orchestra for this short work, which succeeded in ‘limiting its opportunities for performance.’ This three-and-a-half-minute dance would make an ideal ‘encore’ for any symphony orchestra, in Spain or elsewhere.

A very different mood is evoked in the major symphonic poem La nit del mort (Night of the dead man). It was subtitled ‘poem of desolation.’ The work, which includes a tenor solo and a chorus, was composed in 1897. As I understand it, La nit del mort was left unfinished by the composer and remains unpublished. I can only assume that it was completed by someone unknown. It is very much a work of two parts. The first section, as Rob Barnett has pointed out, is almost Delian in its subtlety and soft impressionistic mood. However, about halfway through things change. It becomes almost a mini-opera, with a tenor aria ‘I am death, my girl…’ The chorus insists that the ‘horns of war are sounding’ and that ‘those who die defending their country will be glorified and will not die.’ The ‘libretto’ is by Apel-les Mestres (1854-1936). As a piece, I am only partially impressed. The first section (which I love) is beautiful; the second (which I do not like) is bombastic, over the top and sub-Verdi in its effect.

‘Dante’ was premiered during June 1908 in Barcelona’s then new Palau de la Música Catalana. It was remarkably successful at the time, with performances in the USA, as well as at the Queen’s Hall, London with Sir Henry Wood. It subsequently fell into neglect. As the titles of the two ‘movements’ suggest, Granados took two important themes from Dante’s great poem: the meeting with the great Roman poet Virgil and the tragic love affair between Paolo e Francesca. In this latter movement the mezzo-soprano sings beautifully Francesca’s story. The composer suggested that it was not ‘my intention to mirror The Divine Comedy line by line, but to give my impression of a life and a work; the lives of Dante and Beatrice and The Divine Comedy are, for me, one and the same thing.’ The listener must not look for an Iberian influence in the pages of the two-part symphonic poem. The liner notes quote Carol A. Hess, who has pointed out that this is ‘a vast and sombre work with little hint of the traditional images of a lively, sunlit Spain…’ There are influences from Richard Wagner, César Franck, Alexander Scriabin and even the romantic side of Arnold Schoenberg. The harmonies are chromatic, rich and ‘voluptuous’. Tantalisingly, there exists a third movement of this massive tone-poem, ‘La Laguna Estigia’ (The Stygian Lake) but unfortunately there are only sketches. The work was originally planned to be in four movements.

All the music is finely played and performed by the soloists, the chorus and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra under Pablo González. Mezzo-soprano Gemma Coma-Alabert gives a stunning performance in the ‘Dante’. The liner notes are helpful in approaching this little-known music. They are written by Justo Romero and well-translated by Susannah Howe. They are also given in Spanish. The text of La nit del mort and ‘Paulo e Francesca’ are presented in both languages. Details of the performers are included.

– MusicWeb Internationsl (John France)

The first section shows González and his orchestra at their best, with grainy strings, piquant soft-edged woodwinds and a natural, musicianly way of shaping a phrase. Those qualities are all in evidence in two short gypsy dances and the familiar Goyescas Intermezzo; the slightly hazy Naxos sound complements performances that are affectionate and characterful.

– Gramophone

Schumann: Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra

JERRY GONZALEZ Y EL COMANDO DE LA CLAVE

YA YO ME CURE

MOLIENDO CAFE

RUMBA PARA MONK

Sierra Maestra - named for Cuba's highest mountain - is one of the best-known and no doubt also one of the best Cuban bands, which specializes in "genuine" Cuban music, the son autentico. The particular strength of this group also distinguishes it's personal style: all of the instrumentalists are also outstanding singers; for example, Maceito, also known as Jos� Antonio Rodriquez, the band's lead singer, is one of Cuba's most famous son singers today. Sierra Maestra is among the best son, or salsa, bands in the Spanish Caribbean.