Verdi & Variations

"Yuli Turovsky and his Montreal group play superbly, with real feeling for the music and obvious pleasure in it." --American Record Guide

"So lovely. You’ll keep playing it over and over." --The Canada Post

Verdi wrote only one piece of chamber music - his string quartet written in Naples in spare moments when the production of his Aida was delayed. Its first performance was greeted by one critic as a masterpiece. Verdi, always the realist commented, "I don't know whether it's beautiful or ugly. I only know that it is a quartet."

It was written as an exercise in commanding this musical form without any literary or dramatic associations. Having said that, there is a hint of Falstaff's fairy tormentors in the fugal finale, and there is something of Amneris's music in Aida about the opening Allegro. The Andantino, marked 'con elegenza' is really a rather coy-sounding intermezzo. The brilliant scherzo has a lovely lyrical cantabile melody. The conductor on this album, Yuli Turovsky has made a convincing and sympathetic transcription of the quartet for strings adding colour and weight and the work is played with panache by I Musici.

Marc-Olivier Dupin maybe a young modern composer but his thoroughly enjoyable Fantasia on Arias from La Traviata is cast in the full-blooded late Romantic idiom. If you know and enjoy Franz Waxman's Carmen Fantasia you will know what to expect. Verdi's well-loved melodies from his popular opera are transposed into a virtuoso showpiece for the violinist soloist - and Alexander Trostiansky grasps every opportunity. Hugely enjoyable.

Antonio Pasculli's Grand Concerto on Themes from Verdi's I vespri siciliani is another virtuoso showpiece - this time for oboe. One of the great oboe virtuosos of the second half of the nineteenth century, Pasculli's compositions showed off his considerable technique. Philippe Magnan makes his instrument sing most eloquently and throws off the more difficult florid passages of the work with seemingly effortless ease.

A most interesting and rewarding album

Ian Lace - musicweb.com ****

Verdi: Complete Ballet Music from the Operas

Verdi’s penultimate masterpiece, Otello…bears little or no resemblance to the late style of the main opera but rather relates to the style of Verdi’s early operas. Shrewdly, Serebrier makes this point right at the start by placing this five-minute piece first on disc 1. In that brief span, Verdi offers a sequence of tiny genre pieces with an oriental flavour.

Serebrier follows that with the three atmospheric numbers Verdi wrote for Act 3 of his much earlier Shakespearean opera, Macbeth…Next comes the long ballet scene for the original French version of Don Carlos, with its sections including some for solo cello and violin, all beautifully played here.

The second disc opens with the one exceptional ballet, that for Aida. Last of all comes the most ambitious of all the ballets, the four substantial numbers representing the seasons of the year that Verdi wrote for I vespri siciliani.

As he has often shown in the past, José Serebrier has a remarkable gift for drawing polished and vigorous performances from his orchestra. The result has all the tension and bite of a live performance with the advantage of studio techniques, helped by refined and beautifully balanced recording, transparent in texture. --Gramophone, June 2012

2 CD · MP3 320 · 249 MB

Essential Verdi

This 2-CD collection includes some of the most instantly recognisable Verdi tunes.

2001 was the Verdi Year - Verdi's 100th Anniversary. To celebrate this occasion, Essential Verdi is packed with 40 hits from the greatest Verdi operas with favourite tunes including "La donna è mobile", "Celeste Aida", "Di quella pira" and many more, performed by all the greatest opera stars.

2 CD · MP3 320 · 336 MB