Customer Reviews

Tchaikovsky - Overtures & Fantasies: Francesca da Rimini / Romeo and Juliet,etc.

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first work on this regular red book CD is Tchaikovsky's thrilling, dramatic overture based on the legend of Francesca da Rimini, told by the great Italian poet, Dante, in his Inferno. Music historians tell us that the composer contemplated writing an opera based on the story, but never carried through with it, and ended up writing an overture instead.

Right from the very first notes, everybody playing under director Antonio Pappano is fully present and accounted for. The harmony as unfolded here sounds uncommonly muscular, even dance-able at times. The melody reaches out through the speakers, uncommonly intense and glowing, especially in the love music passages - yes, Francesca and Paolo have their own, as Romeo and Juliet later have theirs. The connecting passages which narrate the chapters of this tragedy for once do not sound like less meaningful bridges whose main reason for being is just to connect the good parts. In sum, this neglected overture is given a committed, passionate reading that easily puts it over the top, right up there with the more famous and more beloved music for Romeo and Juliet in the orchestral overture that preceded Francesca.

This recording goes to the shelf that already cherishes Francesca's overture done by the likes of Stokowski and the LSO in superaudio surround sound (Pentatone), and Charles Munch leading the Royal Philharmonic on a Chesky disc (coupled with an equally marvelous reading of Bizet's youthful Symphony in C).

Then the concert offers us Romeo and Juliet.

The same magical effort made in the Francesca overture yields similar performance gold: passion, yearning love, star-crossed fateful drama, and music that above all reminds one of the large Tchaikovsky ballets. The recorded standards here have also been set at impossible heights by the likes of Claudio Abbado's performance in a rare guest stint with the Boston Symphony (who clearly played the daylights out of the music, for their own and their conductor's and the composer's sheer mystical Hyperion delight). Whoever else you have on your fav shelf in Romeo and Juliet, you must snap up the Abbado/Boston (DGG Universal) disc if you find it in a used bin. It will leave you surmising that maybe the BSO was the best orchestra in the world, just at that recorded moment, now long since passed.

Pappano and band give us the 1880 revision of the original overture. Tighter, even more intense, even more dramatic than the earlier versions had been.

Romeo's opening introduction starts off slowly, deftly foiling our trained sense of early dramatic direction in this music. We all know what is supposed to follow, and even worse, we often realize that we know even as the first notes are being struck on the instruments in most live and recorded performances. Pappano encourages his players to weave such a spell of indeterminate and spontaneous mood that the musical atmosphere settles like a musical mist drifting down from forest hills, not an introduction to a pot-boiler of a love drama. This effect of the interpretation is uncommon, and uncommonly, its magic easily calls us as listeners drinking Nepenthe to forget our hackneyed and adolescent over-exposure to the real and amazing music.

Strangely and freshly, the bloody conflict between the warring families is recalled from a youthful music, dramatic yes, yet still heard at a fresh distance: noisy but less gory, less inevitable and less necessary than we might have already learned from other, full-tilt, technicolor performances. The famous love music swells in wonderful and welcome waves, gorgeous. It flows over us, bathes us, but does not at first overcome us and sweep us completely away. After all, neither Romeo nor Juliet at first realized they would not have the happy ending that all youthful love and desire eternally seek as the treasured entitlement of each and every possible human life.

It is only after the second round of war music that we listeners start to understand the dark that threatens these lovers, and even at the end of the final love music, we are held enthralled in the young and eternal love of Romeo and Juliet, brighter and warmer and more lasting than all their families' deadliness.

In retrospect, then, this Romeo is not at all a very traditional interpretation. Will it nevertheless engage and refresh you? You be the judge.

The next part of this disc has the character of an entr'acte. The waltz and polonaise from the Tchaikovsky opera, Eugene Onegin, is lively and charming, indeed. The chorus brings us onstage with the music's all-too-human entertainment. Light, airy, lifting, effervescent, as bubbly as bubbly. Not important, nor deep, nor nourishing. Like a cool and delicately flavorful sorbet to set and cleanse the palatte.

This disc finishes up with the 1812 Overture. The chorus start us off, singing the hymn to Russia, to God, to the Czar, to the People. I cannot comment on their Russian pronunciation, but the vowels sound genuine enough to help make the musical point, which is after all about victory, a relief-filled return after the end of war's conflicts, and the sheer glory that we humans always use to crown each round of our survival.

Pappano and band work their generous operatic magic on this overture, too. It's self-indulgent languors and fool's gold of political occasions remarkably distill, disappearing as each section is expertly paced. This musical whole is still whole. If the orchestral build-up to the end is still quite predictable, Pappano's way with the harmony is strong, colorful, and fresh as a dewy flower in morning. A fine job, then. Quite as much fun as late nineteenth century toy soldiers and trains ever were or ever could be.

Then suddenly this disc is done. So. Spin. Listen. Be bewitched and beguiled. It is a good thing. Fifty stars.

This is not bombastic & over-emotional Tchaikovsky performance of Stokowski or Svetlanov, but vividly captured & eloquent performance with noble restraint. Pappano's experience with operatic works is evident in each work, masterfully building up drama and intensity, for example in R&J Overture and Francesca. 1812 Overture's choral part has lovely subtlety as well as glorious sonority. Only drawback is that the finale is rather flat, with all percussion instruments muffled in the background, and bass drums are used instead of real artillery. Ormandy (choral version) and Solti's recordings of the work is far more powerful and exhilarating.

This CD from EMI's best young conductor, the Italian-American Antonio Pappano, has gained zero notice here at Amazon, but it's special. With his wide background in opera, you'd expect Pappano to make Tchaikovsky sing, and he does, to thrilling effect. Nothing here is bombastic or overblown, yet it's passionately intense. From the opening of Francesca da Rimini, a wrenching work that condcutors like Mravinsky load with tension and terror, we hear how Pappano reaches deep, shaping every phrase to count emotionally. He does this lightly, with a free touch in rhythms that's very appealing.

The same holds true for Romeo and Juliet, where the Santa Cecilia orchestra, a good but not world-class group, doesn't try to out-Berlin the Berliners but relies on expression to move the listener. In the two Eugene Onegin excerpts the same flowing, breathing style really lifts the dance. As when the opera is staged, a chorus sings along in the waltz, and they appear a capella to open the 1812 Over., an appealing touch. Even nicer is the entry of a women's chorus to sing one of the later folk tunes, followed by the whole cchorus for the Czar's hymn at the end. I'm not sure anyone is waiting with bated breath for an 1812 that puts sweetness before bombast, but this one does just that. EMI's engineering is clear, warm, and open.

In sum, a surprising find from an unlikely source. Even better news is that Pappano quickly followed up with the last three Tchaikovsky symphonies, performed in the same heart-warming style. The Gramophone compaerd his Tchaikovsky to Puccini. Well, yes.

The figure and undeniable directorial talent of Antonio Pappano has been one the most pleasant news in years. His youth has not been an obstacle for this magnificent promise of the art of baton.

I just watched on TV cable this morning (RAI at 12:30 pm local) directing Beethoven `s Seventh with such pristine elegance, accurate rhythmic pulsation, mercurial energy and genuine conviction about the thematic material.

Pappano uplifts the way we used to hear the most of these pieces; he gives vivid charm, visceral energy and imaginative lyric flight.

At this moment he, as well as Thielemans and Dudamel seem to be the most promising masters of the baton in a very recent future.

Kudos for him!