Cimarosa: Overtures (CD review)

Alessandro Amoretti, Nicholaus Esterhazy Sinfonia. Naxos 8.570508.

This collection of Cimarosa overtures, recorded in 2000, was first released on the full-price Marco Polo label in 2002, and then the company made it available on their low-cost Naxos label. I suppose if you wait long enough, all things come to pass.

The Italian composer Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) was among the most prolific and popular composers of the late eighteenth century, probably as popular as Haydn and more popular than Mozart. Life is sometimes unfair, but time has a way of making up for things. Mozart may have died penniless, but today it's obviously his music, not Cimarosa's, that most people prefer. And for good reason. Meanwhile, with the possible exception of his opera Il matrimonio segeteo, Cimarosa is relegated to the ranks of relative obscurity for many listeners.

Anyway, as an introduction to the kind of stuff Cimarosa was turning out, the Naxos collection contains twelve of the man's overtures. Frankly, I couldn't tell you which was which. I mean, you have to remember that these pieces were not meant to stand on their own and be played in succession. Cimarosa wrote them as curtain raisers. That isn't to say the music isn't often engaging and even delightful, only that there isn't a lot of variety to it.

Included on the disc are overtures from the operas Voldomireo; La baronessa Stramba; Le stravaganze del conte; his most long-lasting, the aforementioned Il matrimonio segreto ("The Secret Marriage"); and eight others. Conductor Alessandro Amoretti and the Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia perform them with great vigor, the ensemble itself created especially by the Naxos organization to further their recordings of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century music.

The sound is clean and wide, with moderate depth. It is a pleasant, easy-listening sound of a kind that might be heard from a reasonably close distance in a medium-sized concert hall. It also has good body and vigorous dynamics. The collection might have been overpriced on the Marco Polo label, but it is certainly a strong consideration on this budget-conscious Naxos reissue. I just wish there was more variety to the music.

Adapted from a review the author originally published in the $ensible Sound magazine.

JJP