Rossini, having composed no fewer than forty operas between the ages of nineteen and thirty-seven, wrote none in the next forty years. However these years were not barren of music. Rossini’s Soirées Musicales and Péchés de vieillesse or ‘Sins of old age’ were the musical fruits of salon evenings held weekly in his Parisian home. Elegant, witty, charming and often delicately ironic, these songs for various voices are the perfect exemplar of ‘salon music’, and of the unmistakable late style of a composer who had already become a legend in his lifetime. They are recorded here by three of the greatest singers of today: Stella Doufexis, who has appeared regularly in the Hyperion Schubert and Schumann songs editions; the wonderful Swedish soprano Miah Persson; and the American tenor and Rossini specialist Bruce Ford, all accompanied with characteristic brilliance and style by Roger Vignoles.

'Rossini's writing for the piano is highly idiosyncratic. It requires a first-rate technique, a sure sense of style and an ability to bring off insouciance all manner of hair's-breadth effects. Mr Vignoles has the measure of all this and more' (Gramophone)

'Joyous music-making that is perfect for a summer's evening' (Daily Mail)

'Salon music at its most sophisticated and highly wrought. Gently elegiac bel canto arias jostle with popular dance rhythms, from a yodelling Tyrolean waltz to the snap and swagger of the bolero and fandango … The three singers give virtually unalloyed pleasure' (Daily Telegraph)

'It's hard for any disc of Rossini's Paris salon songs not to speed by in a wink of delight. And it's impossible with Miah Persson's bright soprano and the sensitive accompaniments of Roger Vignoles' (The Times)

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Recording details: April 2007; Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, United Kingdom; Produced by Mark Brown; Engineered by Ben Connellan; Release date: June 2008;