Responding to overwhelming popular demand, Chandos is releasing Verdi and Variations as a 12″ LP for the first time. This new venture, our first LP production in many years, could be the start of an exciting new line in Chandos releases. The works on the record are performed by Canadian ensemble I Musici de Montreal under the direction of the late lamented Yuli Turovsky. Verdi’s String Quartet represents the great operatic composer’s only chamber work and was written, by Verdi’s own admission ‘in the hours when I had nothing to do’. Despite Verdi’s dismissal of the work as of ‘no importance’ it received a fantastic reception at its premier and was hailed as a masterpiece. The present recording is an arrangement for string orchestra by Yuli Turovsky. The other two works on the disc represent two composer’s unique take on Verdi’s music. Antonio Pasculli’s Grand Concerto on Themes from Verdi’s I vespri siciliani is a work originally designed to showcase the composer’s considerable virtuosity as an oboist and is here played by Philippe Magnan. Marc-Oliver Dupin’s Fantasia on Arias from La traviata, published in 1995, revisits the ‘fantasy’ genre in a set of six contrasting and highly entertaining variations.
