Rossini: Overtures

Continuing their series of Rossini recordings, Antonio Pappano and the Rome-based Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia follow three substantial works – the monumental Stabat Mater, the grandly scaled Guillaume Tell and the Petite Messe Solennelle (famously not as small as it names suggests) – with an appetising array of musical antipasti: seven operatic overtures and an enchanting chamber-scale ‘Andante e tema con variazioni’. “There is nothing quite like Rossini played by Italian musicians, as Pappano’s Santa Cecilia Stabat Mater demonstrated,“ wrote the Sunday Times, and – in Antonio Pappano’s eyes – composers do not come more typically Italian than the Pesaro-born genius who wrote dozens of comic and serious operas, famed for their vocal, technical and theatrical virtuosity: “There's something about Rossini," he told the Telegraph, "that gives you a sense of the ideal Italian character type – his measured elegance, his modishess, his exhibitionism…though of course nowadays most of these qualities are on display in the work of clothes designers, not musicians...I try to get the players [of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia] to flaunt their italianità, which means basically a singing tone and warmth. I do think their sound is quite special, and of course I feel very at home with it. I didn’t grow up in Italy but my parents were very Italian, so there are certain things that just go without saying. We naturally phrase the same way.”