Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra - Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau; Schreker: Der Geburtstag der - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

An album of dramatic and passionate Preludes and Intermezzos from some of the most popular Italian operas, from Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Translations of works by early French and Russian realists, Stendahl, Pushkin and Balzac among them, crossed international borders to inspire new homegrown styles of literary realism. The trend took hold in Italy in the 1870s where it was promoted by the authors Luigi Capuana and Giovanni Verga under the banner of verismo, the Italian word for realism, and drew inspiration from the naturalism of Émile Zola and his disciples. Verga's short story Cavalleria rusticana ('Rustic chivalry') and the play that arose from it set the foundations for a new wave of Italian operas, with Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana serving as the genre's enduring model.

Vasily Petrenko's previous Stravinsky recordings have been universally praised by the critics for the fine interpretations of these great scores, the superb playing of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and for the outstanding recorded sound. The same technical team was on hand for the final album in the series - the 1911 version of Petrushka, which is coupled with the delightful Rossini/Respighi La Boutique fantasque.

The Estonian composer Mihkel Kerem - born in Tallinn in 1981 and Joint Assistant Leader in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra since 2015 - used the Covid lockdown to produce no fewer than four symphonies, two of them, his Seventh and Eighth, conceived as a contrasting pair. Kerem's dark and ominous Seventh Symphony, like that of Sibelius, plots a huge sonata-form arch, growing from and back into it's opening material. It's soundworld sits somewhere between Sibelius and Schnittke, combining a sense of natural symphonic growth with dramatic twists of kaleidoscopic textural variety. No. 8, which also nods to Sibelius' Seventh by quoting it's celebrated trombone theme, is a vast, unhurried accelerando, it's three linked movements tapping into the Nordic-Baltic tradition of using the controlled power of the orchestra to suggest the vastness of nature.