Rossini: Complete Piano Music Volume 1 (2CD)

When Rossini drew a line under his own hugely successful operatic career at the age of 37, he spent his final years in Paris where he wrote numerous short piano pieces arranged in 14 volumes, which he jokingly called Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age): experimental trifles which blur the boundaries between the irreverent and the serious. Volume VII, ‘Album de chaumière’ (The Cottage Album) includes gems such as the delightful Petite polka chinoise, the intimate and touching Petite valse de boudoir and the decidedly reassuring Prélude inoffensif. The recording is rounded off with four solo piano pieces from Volume IX of the Péchés, whose titles, like those of the other works on this disc, are playfully deceptive.