Franco Alfano
is known today mostly as the composer who completed
Puccini
's unfinished opera
Turandot
, although what is actually heard is, in large part, the edits made by
Arturo Toscanini
to that completion. However,
Alfano
was a successful composer in his own day, albeit one whose reputation was dented by his backing of
Mussolini
's government, and he was a major figure in Italian music education; he wrote many operas, including one based on a Sanskrit-language play. This little recording by the
Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi
and conductor
Giuseppe Grazioli
explores his orchestral works. They don't sound like
, although
Respighi
seems to be in the wings; the orchestration of the big
Suite romantica
and
Una danza
, written more than 40 years apart but not dissimilar in style, is pretty spectacular. Those hoping for big Puccinian tunes will probably be disappointed, yet there are pleasures in the other works as well, not least the rather complex solo accordion piece
Nenia
.
Amour... amour...
(1901) was almost a popular tune, an example of what would soon be called light music in Britain, and melodically, it is probably the best of the bunch. The Milan group is equal to the orchestration details, and the music here is all listenable and generally a lot of fun. Kudos to
Naxos
for this and its other rediscoveries of Italian music from the first part of the 20th century; this one made classical best-seller lists in the spring of 2024. ~ James Manheim