MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
Classicsonline  AmazonUK  AmazonUS

 

Gioachino ROSSINI (1792-1868)
Complete Piano Music - Volume 1
CD1
Péchés de vieillesse, Vol. VII: Album de Chaumière Nos 1-7 [57:58]
CD2
Péchés de vieillesse, Vol. VII: Album de Chaumière Nos 8-12 [41:22]
Péchés de vieillesse, Vol. IX: Album pour piano, violon, violoncelle, harmonium et cor (Nos. 1, 3, 2, 5) [23:37]
Alessandro Marangoni (piano)
rec. Auditorium di Mortara, Pavia, Italy, 29 October-2 November 2006. DDD
NAXOS 8.570590-91 [57:58 + 64:59]
Experience Classicsonline


Gioachino Rossini’s remarkable life and career is well known: the opera composer who, with the world at his feet, appeared to retire at the age of 37. He had around 17 years of huge success with operas such as Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and after completing his last opera Guillaume Tell, he had another 39 years of ‘silence’. The second period of his life was in fact anything but silent, and Rossini would later turn up with pieces such as the Stabat Mater and the wonderful Petit messe solennelle.
 
More private were the creations which became collected as the Péchés de vieillesse or ‘Sins of Old Age’, which are contained in fourteen volumes. Some of these are for voice and piano, others, such as volume IX, include pieces with strings, harmonium and horn, the solo piano works from which appear at the end of this programme. Album de Chaumière or ‘The Cottage Album’ is the no doubt ironically twee title given to volume VII, the first of the albums for solo piano. This consists of 12 pieces ranging from titles such as Petite polka chinoise to works of a grander scale such as Une pensée à Florence. Rossini’s attitude with these works is frequently ironic and often deceptive. Confronted with a title such as Prélude inoffensif, one might expect something other than the extended lyrical aria which in fact appears. The generally light character of many of the pieces is interspersed with more searching, funereal atmospheres such as that in Un profound sommeil, and Un cauchemar – literally ‘A Nightmare’. In these pieces we are not so very far removed from the symbolic cries of the owl in Leoš Janáček’s ‘On a Overgrown Path.’ On the complete opposite there are parody-like pieces such as the bombastic Marche which closes Vol.VII.
 
Alessandro Marangoni is a young pianist and a rising star whose reputation will in no way be harmed with these recordings. Whatever one thinks of these ‘Sins of Old Age’ they are certainly a fascinatingly enigmatic and eclectic mixture of Rossini in all moods. Fans of the Petit messe solenelle must certainly investigate these pieces, as the thick piano chords and bouncy bass lines which crop up in that work are certainly not absent here. Fans of Rossini’s operas are also kept well fed with rich melodic invention, if performed instrumentally rather than vocally. This Naxos recording is very good, with a rich, deep piano sound, if captured in a rather dry and tubby acoustic. The impression is one of a front room soirée rather than a concert hall performance, which isn’t such a bad thing for these pieces. I do however feel that a slightly more sympathetic space might have helped Alessandro Marangoni when trying to give a more legato feel, or in varying the colour and mood. The pieces come across a little on the lumpy side sometimes, and the contrast between some of the works is less startling than might otherwise have been the case.                 
         
This new series will have to compete with the recordings by Stefan Irmer on MDG, and although there is no information on the instrument used in the Naxos recording – other than that it is a Steinway & Sons from the Angelo Fabbrini collection, it gives the impression of being an older instrument, a quality it would then share with the MDG recordings. The bass has a pleasant rounded quality, and the usual Steinway brightness only really shines through in the upper registers at higher volume. Any reservations I may have can be accounted for as a matter of personal taste, so nothing I say should stop anyone from dropping into their local retailer and bagging this remarkable release forthwith. This is going to turn into another of Naxos’s eminently collectable sets, and on this showing will prove to be worth it at almost any price.
 
Dominy Clements        
 



 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.