Readers of Digby Anderson's occasional Spectator column ''Imperative Cooking'' will know that you can buy a wonderful variety of fresh fish in this country, though you will need persistence, guile, good sense and a trusted supplier if you are to avoid the reasty, dull-eyed, gas-frozen stuff that is peddled by certain supermarket chains it would probably be too expensive to name here. Sadly, it is the same with collections of Rossini's overtures. Most published compilations of this delicious musical staple are just as reasty and dull-eyed: inaccurate and bloated texts, crude playing, inept recording venues, poor layout. And all this, would you believe it, in response to some of the wittiest, the most elegant and best orchestrated theatre music there has ever been.
One sees the problems, of course. It certainly can't be easy finding a conductor, let alone players and a hall, who are equally at home in a four-part romantic tone-poem like the Overture to Guillaume Tell as in a fizzing curtain-raiser like La scala di seta. One of the glories of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's 1985 DG collection—the principal glory is the playing—is their decision to stick with the fizzing curtain-raisers. Apart from the Overture to Il barbiere, everything in their collection dates from the years 1810-14, the years during which Rossini evolved and perfected what we now think of as 'the Rossini overture'.
The best of the rest are listed above. Toscanini's lyricism, his ear for clean textures, and above all his rhythmic sense are second to none; Reiner is, as ever, the compelling stylist; Dutoit succeeds better than any latter conductor in getting a big symphony orchestra to strip for action. And there is Norrington: original sounds, big-boned performances. Yet all have their problems. Several of the recordings in the Toscanini collection are old and acid-sounding. Reiner uses some thickened and out-dated texts. Dutoit's engineers have opted for an acoustic that suits the later overtures better than the earlier ones. Norrington's performances occasionally blow up in one's face.
So a warm welcome—two cheers at least—for this nifty, well-filled and sensibly ordered budget collection on EMI's Encore label. It offers ten tracks, most of them well recorded in the late 1950s or early 1960s, from a variety of conductors. As well as Sir Malcolm Sargent with, of all orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic, there's Tullio Serafin and Alceo Galliera, the young Colin Davis, and the master of them all: Sir Thomas Beecham. The three Galliera recordings were never released on LP, though goodness knows why. They were made in London in 1959 when the Philharmonia Orchestra was at the very peak of its powers.
I don't much care for a rather over-driven performance of the Overture to L'inganno felice from Jerzy Maksymiuk and the Polish Chamber Orchestra. And Davis's Il Signor Bruschino does not come up too well, either as a performance or technically. But the rest is pretty good. In an area of the repertory where most budget-price releases are the dregs, this anthology certainly merits the outlay of a crumpled fiver.'