Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, Misha Rachlevsky - Rossini - Six Sonatas for Strings (1993)

Rossini himself described these works as «six dreadful sonatas, composed by me on holiday at the home (near Ravenna) of my Maecenas friend Agostino Triossi when I was at a most infantile age, not even having taken a lesson in accompaniment.» Written at the age of twelve, as if only for the pleasure of it, in only three days with an ease reminiscent of Mozart, these compositions exude an entrancing, naive freshness. The young prodigy succeeded in imprinting them with an unbelievable wealth of emotions. Joy, felicity, vitality, refinement and spiritual harmony, all of the qualities typical of the mature Rossini can already be found expressed in these works.

Rossini’s contagious laughter is also present for the first time in these sonatas; his unique sense of humor is manifested here not in words or with a plot, but through various instrumental timbres and textures. Rossini’s witty and acerbic comments about his sonatas almost proved to be their demise; they were banished to dusty archives and remained anonymous to musicians, scholars and music-lovers for some 150 years, for an entire century and a half!

It was not possible, however, forever to hide the genius behind these six masterpieces. They now belong to the standard repertoire of the best chamber orchestras, along with works like Vivaldi’s concertos, Haydn’s symphonies and divertimentos and Mozart’s «Eine kleine Nachtmusik».