Customer Reviews

Veracini: Overtures Nos. 1,2,3,4, & 6

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

 

 

The music is grand, elaborate and highly original. However this performance with Alberto Martini conducting is mediocre and does not do it justice. Buy the recording with Reinhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Cologne if you can get it.

Play this splendid CD to a friend who doesn't know the composer, and he'll probably guess Handel. Veracini was indeed almost a contemporary of Handel and Bach, being born in 1690. Like their orchestral suites, his overtures contain a succession of short movements, mostly in dance forms. Veracini also composed operas, one of which contains a little "pastorale" once enchantingly recorded by Luisa Tetrazzini.

For this recording, the manuscripts of the works were studied and corrected at Venice, and the recording was made in Verona. Everything here is of five star standard, especially the sound quality. Look out for a second CD from the same stable.

I agree with half of what David Kemp says, I think it is fine music, but the performance and the sound are awful! I did not buy vol 2, so I can't comment on it. To hear a good version listen to that of Musica Antiqua Koln, if you can't hear the difference then there is no hope for you!

Sorry to tread on people's feelings, and I don't want to knock Naxos, the sound quality in their recordings is usualy good.

I was a fellow resident of Plano not long before the negative review from there originated. Veracini is an acquired taste, of course, but not liking the music and pooh-poohing the performance are two different things. I disagree with the Aussie about who someone would guess--the opening bars (largo) are strictly Bach (as in the overtures of unknown date). Either Bach heard Veracini or vice versa and one suspects it is the former. Thereafter, Veracini and Bach part ways. If you enjoy Bach's overtures, then certainly you should not pass this by. Good Veracini performances are about as plentiful as people who know who he is (he does not even appear in my edition of Kennedy's dictionary). Sound is very natural (typical for Naxos because they could only afford two microphones).

I bought this CD on the recommendation of my good friend and fellow longtime music-lover John Austin (see his review below), and after listening to it carefully twice, I'm left scratching my head wondering what he found to like about it. In fact, his assessment of this CD and mine are about as far apart as those of two listeners could be (if you read both of our reviews, you will wonder if we were both listening to the same recording). I love the baroque and have a healthy appetite for good baroque instrumental music, but to my ears the music here is second-rate: unimaginative, predictable, and repetitious (I don't think you will mistake it for Handel or Bach). Based on what we hear here, I would speculate that Veracini, a famous virtuoso violinist, had a limited ability to create interesting musical ideas, and an even more limited capacity for developing them. Furthermore, the performances don't rise above the level of well-drilled routine competence. This is music, and these are performances, that don't get off the ground.

Similarly undistinguished is the quality of the engineering. Many Naxos releases have excellent sound; this is not one of them. You will want to turn down the volume, because the sound is glassy and hard; if you turn it up, the violin tone is revealed as unpleasantly edgy and steely. Moreover, the sound is congested, with poor resolution of detail and of the differentiation of the instruments in the ensemble, which seem clotted together into one homogenized, centralized mass; there is a closed-in, boxy, "canned" quality, with no sense of ambience, of openness, of separation, of the players spread out on a left-to-right soundstage. Instead this 1995 CD resembles a dated monaural recording. (And let me add that I am listening on a first-class, highly revealing system on which well-engineered recordings sound wonderful.) Naxos wisely changed the engineer for volume two (1998) in this series, which although recorded in the same hall in Verona sounds much better. In fact, volume two is preferable on all counts except length: the music is more interesting and varied, the performances more lively.

To sum up, then, apart from uninspired, monotonous music, routine performances, and mediocre sound, this is a terrific recording. Seriously, I wanted to like this CD, but I'm sorry to report that I can't find anything to recommend here; in this recording one's fears of a "budget-priced" CD are realized, for everything is on the bargain-basement level. For me this is one of the disappointments of the bountiful, inviting, and often very rewarding Naxos catalog. Caveat emptor. If you want to sample Veracini on Naxos, I suggest you skip this lackluster entry and move on to volume two.

Veracini? Who? Another bland, by-the-numbers Baroque composer, eh? A set of lifeless "overtures" with gigues and gavottes? These were my initial thoughts when I bought the piece out of random curiosity. They were immediately dispelled by the first theme of the first movement of Overture No.1--an completely heart-warming, dancing, jaunty theme that is impossible to forget.

All the Overtures are completely unexpected--less Baroque than a kind of hybrid Classical Overture, combining slightly galant elements with pure melody and dashing rhythms. Overture No.1 overflows with orchestral delights--it's some of the most infectious work I've heard in ages, and it compares very favorably with Bach's Overtures (though it is ridiculous to compare Veracini with Bach or Handel--let's just appreciate him as he is).

The stand out gem is the dramatic, fiery Overture No.6, with its Sturm un Drang melancholy. The final movement is a heavy-footed unison dance, totally remarkable and original. This is all beautifully played by Martini and his Italian orchestra (which also performed beautiful in some Vivaldi concertos for Naxos). Never mind the ridiculous negative review printed below--it totally misses the boat. For engaging, tuneful, muscular music which is more expansive than Vivaldi and suggests where Haydn would start off with his symphonies, Veracini is your man. I can't wait to buy the second volume, since this set omits Overture No.5 (sob).

A happy find! Thanks to Naxos for unearthing it at a great price!