| Royal Classics |  |
| Disc No: ROY6474 | |
| Price: Sek. 51 |
The 19th century saw the overture divide into two distinct types: an orchestral to a stage work, and the so-called 'concert overture', which had no stage connection and was designed as an independent work for concert performance. Tchaikovsky's 1812 is of the second type. He called it Ouverture Solenelle, which we may translate as 'festival overture', the festival being that to commemorate the Russian victory over Napoleon at Borodino in 1812. The composer thought along massive lines. Brass bands were to be included, cannon fire should mark the ceremony, and 'all the bells of Moscow' should peal out. London's Kingsway Hall, where this recording was made, is a long way from Moscow so Maestro Karajan understandably settled for a compromise. Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave is a concert overture describing his impressions on seeing the famous cave on the island of Staffa in the Hebrides in 1829. Such a work would have been called a tone poem later in the century. Suppe's and Offenbach's overtures were designed to accompany arriving audiences and set the scenes for their respective operettas. Light Cavalry was first heard in the Carltheater, Vienna, in 1866, and Orpheus in the Underworld, one of Offenbach's 97 light operas, was given its premiere in Paris in 1858. Berlioz's Roman Carnival, which he called ouverture caracteristique, is purely for concert performance and appeared in 1844. Respighi turned for inspiration to Rome's heritage several times, and in The Pines of Rome (1924) he depicts children playing and soldiers in the shadow of the Villa Borghese pines, a pine-shaded catacomb issuing fragments of ancient chant, the Janiculum pines in which sits a nightingale (the score calls for a gramophone record of the bird), and the pines along the Appian Way which had witnessed the passing of so many Roman legions many years earlier. Robert Dearling. Discontinued |
| Name: Karajan conducts Orchestral Favourites 2 | |
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| Composer | Opus | Produced | Music | Key | Performer |
| Berlioz, Hector | Op.9 | 1958 | Le Carnaval Romain - Overture | Philharmonia Orchestra - Herbert von Karajan | |
| Offenbach, Jacques | 1960 | Orpheus in the Underworld | |||
| Respighi, Otto | 1958 | The pines of Roma | |||
| Suppé, Franz von | 1960 | Light Cavalery Overture | |||
| Tchaikovsky, Peter | Op.49 | 1958 | 1812 Overture | ||
| Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix | Op.26 | 1960 | Hebrides Overture | Wiener Philharmoniker - Herbert von Karajan |