Wolf-Ferrari reviews
Wolf-Ferrari: I quattro rusteghi
Silvia Beltrami, Aleksandar Stefanoski, Daniela Degennaro, Mihnea Lamatic, Tansel Akzeybek, Mirko Quarello, Giulio Pelligra, Romina Casucci, Agnieszka Hauzer, Ana James; European Opera Centre, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko (Rubicon)
Francesca Dego performs violin concertos by Paganini and Wolf-Ferrari
Paganini’s First Concerto used to be played by only a handful of devotees – even now, despite taking all the once-traditional cuts, Yehudi Menuhin’s early 1960s stereo account with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Alberto Erede (EMI/Warner) comes closest to making all those Rossini-in-overdrive pyrotechnics sound musically compelling. Since then, a number of distinguished accounts have emerged, ranging from those by Midori and Itzhak Perlman to those by Maxim Vengerov and Hilary Hahn.