Preludio sinfonico in A Major

Puccini was 23 and still a student when he completed the Preludio sinfonico, one of a small number of works he wrote for orchestra before embarking on a career in opera. His close familiarity with Wagner’s opera Lohengrin is evident in the plaintive oboe tune that opens the Preludio, and in the way the string writing develops it. At the centre of the piece, Puccini’s writing becomes more animated and his orchestration richer. An emotional climax is reached, brass instruments blazing, before the relative placidity of the opening music re-enters. The Preludio sinfonico was first performed in 1882 in an end-of-year concert at the Milan Conservatory, where, though recognised as technically proficient, it had a lukewarm reception. Puccini’s own rapidly developing talent for melody is, however, strongly apparent, and the Preludio clearly anticipates the impassioned emotional world of the operas he would later begin writing.