Who or what is or are Puccini's Crisantemi, you may say. Having the advantage of the disc's booklet in front of me, I now know: Crisantemi are chrysanthemums. The piece is a rewarding elegy for a son of Victor Emanuel II; and turns out to be of sufficient quality for Puccini to have re-used some of the music for Manon's death-scene in Manon Lescaut. The disc's selection chooses its seven pieces from seven different composers of seven different countries of continental Europe. Most of the pieces are familiar enough; though the Hugo Wolf Serenade is more familiar in its original string quartet version than in the superlatively written orchestral one played here. Who made this version? Wolf himself, say some: Max Reger, say others. Probability suggests Reger, who had great orchestral skill and experience, not likely to have been equally available to Wolf. By whoever, the scoring is absolutely splendidly done.

The Puccini and the Wolf share with the more familiar remainder of the programme a stellar quality of performance at the hands of the American Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The recording is excellent, both in tonal quality and in orchestral balance. If it is possible to make a better record of the music concerned I certainly cannot imagine how.

-- Gramophone [10/1991]