Donizetti's rollicking comic opera "The Elixir of Love" receives a scintillating performance in this early 1970's London/Decca recording. Featuring an unbeatable cast, headed by Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti, this wonderful interpretation demonstrates singing of the highest levels of artistic integrity- definitive, passionate, lyrical, committed. The English Chamber Orchestra responds to Richard Bonynge's direction to provide sharp, colorful orchestral support, and the Ambrosian Opera Chorus' performance can only be described as brilliant. Donizetti wrote immediately attractive operatic works, this "Elixir of Love" being a perfect example.

Respected international pianist Rosemary Tuck presents a collection of works by Czerny on this release for Naxos. Primarily remembered today as a pupil of Beethoven, a teacher of Liszt, and for his famous piano treatise, Czerny was a prolific composer in his own right. This album brings together his enchanting Introduzione e Rondo brillant in B Flat Major, the Piano Concerto in D Minor, and the Introduction, Variations and Rondo on C.M. von Weber's Hunting Chorus from Euryanthe, displaying the varied skills of this overlooked 19th-century figure.

Carl Czerny penned an astonishing amount of music, including the numerous potpourris, fantasies, teaching pieces and studies for which he became known. This recording features the delightfully entertaining "Concertino in C major", Op. 210/213 (MS Op. 197), as well as the highly enjoyable "Rondino", a work based on an enchanting theme taken from Daniel Auber’s opéra comique Le Maçon.

This album of world premieres is the first volume in a series of Carl Czerny’s works for piano and orchestra starring Australian pianist Rosemary Tuck. She is accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra under conductor Richard Bonynge on this programme, inspired by the most famous and attractive themes from Bel Canto operas which were hugely popular in their time and are still performed today. The sets of variations as performed here give full rein to the soloist and are a major contribution to the great pianist composer tradition.

Even Dame Joan Sutherland has rarely if ever made an opera recording so totally enjoyable and involving as this. With the same cast (including chorus and orchestra) as at Convent Garden, it was recorded in 1967 immediately after a series of live performances in the Royal Opera House, and both the comedy and the pathos come over with an intensity born of communication with live audiences. That impression is now the more vivid on this superb transfer, for with spoken dialogue used in this original French version of the opera the absence of background noise is a special benefit, and the production vividly captures the developments in the story.