la Reupubblica Campania

With more than eighty operas to his credit, Paisiello rivaled Mozart for success in this competitive field, though his eight keyboard concertos fell short of Mozart’s output in numerical terms. They are, however, unfailingly delightful works whose charm and deftly balanced interplay between the solo instrument and orchestra are characteristic of Paisiello’s appealing style. Although the First Concerto was conceived for harpsichord and the Third and Fifth for fortepiano, each retains its transparent beauty when performed, as here, on a modern piano. The Second and Fourth Concertos are available on Naxos 8.557031.

After a first disc devoted to English music, La Rêveuse introduces us to the sound world of Louis de Caix d’Hervelois. As heir to Marin Marais and one of his most brilliant pupils, Caix brought the bass viol new prestige in an era that was gradually abandoning the instrument. This composer skilled in expressing the elegance and grace of the Enlightenment era left us a substantial and varied corpus of music, a vivid portrait gallery in which bass viol, pardessus de viole and flute shine with especial lustre.

Like Lucia di Lammermoor and Elvira (I puritani), Amina, the gentle heroine of La sonnambula,was a role that had become associated with light-voiced coloratura sopranos. Callas brought both a new substance and subtlety to the role when Luchino Visconti staged it for her at La Scala in 1955. This recording was made two years later, when the production was revived.

Relentlessly pursued by Fate, Leonora in La forza del destino is a haunted heroine whose passions and fears are expressed on a grand scale. Callas’s stage experience of Forza was limited to her early career in Italy – in fact, Leonora was her first Verdi role – but, as Lord Harewood, founder of Opera magazine, observed, her recorded assumption exhibited ‘an unparalleled musical sensibility and imagination and a grasp of the musico-dramatic picture which is unique’. She took her place in a powerful cast conducted by her mentor Tullio Serafin.