Usually our Midday Masterpiece is one long noteworthy composition. But as today is the birthday of composer Gioachino Rossini, which we get to celebrate on his actual birthday only once every four ...

If there is a familiar template to the structure of most of Rossini’s opera overtures, Antonio Pappano and his Rome orchestra reveal that there is much more than rum-ti-tum routine in their musical ...

This pleasing performance of Rossini’s exhilarating piece is apparently the work of one of Japan’s biggest pop acts. The William Tell Overture is one of the most exhilarating pieces in music. So we ...

Dazzling recordings of favourite and less well-known overtures. Classic FM Drive Featured Album, 20 January 2014. The Prague Sinfonia Orchestra are on a mission to record all of Rossini’s overtures ...

I've always had a soft spot for Gioacchino Rossini's overtures. Their slow introductions and sprightly melodies invariably lead to a big crescendo passage, in which Rossini repeats a motif several ...

LATE last November I raved about Volume One of a new Naxos project to record all of Rossini's overtures in a four-volume set. The standard of Prague playing with conductor Christian Benda was ...