Rai

After recordings of Beethoven’s complete symphonies, two Ravel albums, one Rautavaara album, and the award-winning album ‘Americascapes’, Robert Treviño now turns his focus on the symphonic poems by Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936). Together with the Orchestra Nazionale Sinfonica della RAI, Robert Treviño presents the composer’s famous Roman Trilogy, an exciting orchestral masterpiece culminating in the triumphant Pines of Rome.

After recordings of Beethoven’s complete symphonies, two Ravel albums, one Rautavaara album, and the award-winning album ‘Americascapes’, Robert Treviño now turns his focus on the symphonic poems by Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936).Together with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra Robert Treviño presents the composer’s famous Roman Trilogy, an exciting orchestral masterpiece culminating in the triumphant Pines of Rome.

The RAI Pasquale of 1955 is almost as good as the two Verdis [#4 Otello and #551 Traviata], marred only by Italo Tajo's overdone mugging in the title-part. Alda Noni, remembered affectionately by older opera-goers in the same part at London's Cambridge Theatre in the late 1940s, remains a charming, minxish though now more buxom Norina. Sesto Bruscantini is a model of a Malatesta, Cesare Valletti even better as an Ernesto in the class of his teacher, Tito Schipa. Erede's seasoned conducting and a resourceful staging makes this a delightful experience.

Delving into the deepest recesses of raï, this compilation serves as a tribute to its roaring years, but also as a rejuvenation of the genre in its sulphurous, subterranean version. It seemed like a good idea to dig into nearly untraceable cassettes, thus confirming it’s in the oldest of Oranese pots that the very best of raï is to be found. Just 50 years ago, no one would have believed even a bit in a genre seemingly bound to forever turn round and round in its native Oran, laying low in one of its many coastal road clubs.