Back to What's onSoprano Andriana Yordanova and pianist Caroline Calleja perform a selection of pieces from the Salon Music collection of 150 vocal, chamber and solo piano pieces by composer Gioachino Rossini.
Rossini withdrew from composing opera for the last 40 years of his life, a curious fact that has never been fully explained; it could have been ill-health, the wealth that his success had brought him, or the rise of spectacular grand opera by composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer. From the early 1830s to 1855, when he left Paris and was based in Bologna, Rossini wrote relatively little. On his return to Paris in 1855 he became renowned for his musical salons on Saturdays, regularly attended by musicians and the artistic and fashionable circles of Paris, for which he wrote the entertaining pieces Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age). Guests included Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Giuseppe Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Joseph Joachim. Rossini’s last major composition was his Petite messe solennelle (1863).
