Aecheologia Dell

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.”

The four concerti in The Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi have probably earned the distinction of being the most frequently recorded classical works in the digital era. Originally published as part of a set of 12 concerti as Vivaldi's Opus 8, the other eight concerti also get some attention, particularly La tempesta di mare, but the set as a whole is comparatively seldom recorded. In Europa Galante's Virgin Classics release, Vivaldi: Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, violinist Fabio Biondi, who has recorded The Four Seasons at least once before for Opus 111, leads his expert ensemble in the whole of the Opus 8 set. The 12 concerti fit comfortably onto two CDs, with some reshuffling of the pieces into a different order than that assembled by Vivaldi, though not through splitting up the "big four."