Puccini: Orchestral Music

Made in the depths of an English winter, this dazzling album radiates the heat of Italy in June. It trains the spotlight on works from Puccini’s student years, orchestral music conceived for or recycled in his early operas, Le villi and Edgar, and two pieces created for his first operatic hit, Manon Lescaut. John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London, an extraordinary blend of principal players from other bands, soloists and ace chamber musicians, extract countless colours from the composer’s instrumentations: listen, for instance, to the Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut, where the solo and collective strings hold the stage like impassioned opera divas, or to every section of the orchestra’s heart-on-sleeve commitment to the Capriccio sinfonico. The latter springs a surprise at its centre—a potent pre-echo of the music that Puccini used again to launch his La bohème—while the Scherzo-Trio includes a tender tune destined to appear decades later in Madama Butterfly.