Search - Norrington :: Romantic Overtures

Transparent Sound

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 06/12/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The demise of Roger Norrington?s London Classical Players is to be greatly lamented. Following on from some great rediscoveries of Beethoven and Berlioz, Norrington went on, briefly, to explore romantic repertoire in historical performance practice. This CD gives a favorable impression of what could have been possible if the series had continued longer. As usual with the LCP, the music has been well-researched, and Norrington opts for the seating arrangements at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, with the second violins on the right and the lower string instruments in the center. This gives a transparent sound which enables one to follow all the detail as worked out from the original scores. The first three tracks on this recording, the Weber, the Mendelssohn and the Berlioz, are all excellent in every respect, although I found the volume of the recording a little low. The Berlioz overture has been re-released together with Berlioz?s ?Symphonie fantastique? and gives a marvellous impression of the orchestration skills for which this composer was justly famous. The Weber and the Mendelssohn show forth equally the delicacy and mastery of their composers and are well worth the hearing in this unpompous performance. The next two tracks, Schumann?s overture to ?Genoveva? and Schubert?s overture to ?Die Zauberharfe? are, to my mind, minor works and do not come over so well as the other tracks on this recording, their chief merit being that they are otherwise seldom heard. The climax of the CD is, however, the ?original? or ?early? version of Wagner?s overture to the ?Flying Dutchman?, a piece generally heard in Wagner?s late revision. Norrington here goes back to the original performance, but is careful to allow for Wagner?s tempo variations, which he assumes to have been present from the beginning but only notated in the later score. This is a superb performance. All in all, the CD is perhaps not one of the absolute highlights of the LCP series, but it is certainly worth buying and is able to open the listener?s eyes and ears to what is really going on in these early romantic scores."