London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado - Rossini: Ouvertüren (1987) CD-Rip

Good performances of Rossini overtures—of the kind taken for granted by a previous generation whenever men like Beecham, Gui, Serafin, or Toscanini stepped on to the rostrum—are something of a rarity these days. Too often, conductors, orchestras, and engineers turn poor Rossini into what Scott Goddard once called that "obese old gallant". (Not always very gallant, either.) Happily, in these pieces as in much else besides, Claudio Abbado is a cut above the average. As he conducts Rossini his music is as spare, witty, and original as Stravinsky's: the Stravinsky of Pulcinella, for instance. Rossini's vitality is seen as being both exuberant and obsessive and it is complemented by an ear for orchestral timbre which is economical, original, occasionally bizarre, and always wonderfully acute in its perceptions. DG's dry, Glyndebourne-like acoustic helps, as does the playing of the LSO: wonderfully icy strings, and English woodwinds which can still point a Rossini phrase as appetizingly, as incomparably, as their predecessors did for Beecham in the famous old LPO recordings.