Pappano

This magnificent recording of Aida, made in Rome, rises to all the musical and dramatic challenges presented by Verdi’s richly-coloured Egyptian epic. Antonio Pappano, once again proving his mastery of Italian opera, moves between sumptuous grandeur and touching intimacy. The responses of the Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia are both immediate and vibrant, while the singers – Anja Harteros, Jonas Kaufmann, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Ludovic Tézier and Erwin Schrott – do justice to every facet of their roles.

Antonio Pappano and his Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi with this programme of sacred choral music. The repertoire consists of the Four Sacred Pieces and, with soprano Maria Agresta as the soloist, the 1880 Ave Maria and the original version of Libera me from the Messa da Requiem. Pappano and his forces will perform this programme on 20 July at the Royal Albert Hall for the 2013 BBC Proms.

Antonio Pappano conducts Rome’s Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in two works from the earlier phase of Richard Strauss’s career: a comparative rarity, the mercurial, virtuosic Burleske for piano and orchestra, with Bertrand Chamayou as soloist, and the epic autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben, one of the composer’s orchestral masterpieces. “Strauss always thought dramaturgically,” says Pappano. “Recording this music in Italy, the link has to be through opera, with all its theatricality, temperament, contrast and colour… You need a certain charisma in the sound, which these players achieve.”