Usually our Midday Masterpiece is one long noteworthy composition. But as today is the birthday of composer Gioachino Rossini, which we get to celebrate on his actual birthday only once every four ...

If there is a familiar template to the structure of most of Rossini’s opera overtures, Antonio Pappano and his Rome orchestra reveal that there is much more than rum-ti-tum routine in their musical ...

Dazzling recordings of favourite and less well-known overtures. Classic FM Drive Featured Album, 20 January 2014. The Prague Sinfonia Orchestra are on a mission to record all of Rossini’s overtures ...

LATE last November I raved about Volume One of a new Naxos project to record all of Rossini's overtures in a four-volume set. The standard of Prague playing with conductor Christian Benda was ...

I have spent a considerable amount of time in the last fortnight listening to and being ceaselessly exhilarated by a new CD of overtures. They are all by Rossini and the CD will be reviewed in the ...