Naomis Room

Recorded at the Decca studios in the summer of 1970, Room's Pre-Flight was an ambitious blend of rock, blues, jazz and classical influences. The album was critically well received but unfortunately like many strong releases of this genre at the time on the classic Deram label, did not achieve the hoped for breakthrough to greater commercial success. Room's only recorded work, the album has been re-mastered from the original analogue tapes and is now presented in this definitive edition from Esoteric Recordings.

Born in Bergamo, Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) wrote string quartets, 18 in all. While this output may be dwarfed by the 65 or so operas he composed, that they exist at all may be a surprise. Mostly written in his youth while he was waiting for his first opera commission, the surest way to fame and fortune for a young composer, they exhibit the promise that he was later to fulfill in the opera house.

Our new recording of quartets by Haydn, Mozart, Vanhal and Dittersdorf who played quartets together in Vienna in 1784. Michael Kelly, the Irish tenor who was the original stammering Don Curzio in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, tells us in his Reminiscences about the occasion and we are delighted that the world-famous actor, Simon Russell Beale, has recorded a script for us, adapted from Kelly, which sets the scene.