Respighi Orchestral Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johann Sebastian Bach, Ottorino Respighi
Label: Chandos
Magazine Review Date: 1/1995
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 60
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CHAN9311
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Belfagor |
Ottorino Respighi, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Ottorino Respighi, Composer |
Toccata |
Ottorino Respighi, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Geoffrey Tozer, Piano Ottorino Respighi, Composer |
Choral Preludes from the Kirnberger Collection, Movement: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV699 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer |
Chorale Preludes, Movement: Fuga sopra il Magnificat (Meine Seele erhebt den Herren), BWV733 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer |
(6) Schübler Chorales, Movement: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV645 |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer |
Fantasia slava |
Ottorino Respighi, Composer
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Downes, Conductor Geoffrey Tozer, Piano Ottorino Respighi, Composer |
Author: Michael Oliver
The Fantasia slava, here receiving its first recording, is a piece of fascinating evidence about how Respighi became Respighi. It is a blend of indeed very Slav-sounding themes (the opening two might well be by Rimsky-Korsakov—Respighi's teacher, briefly—and perhaps Glazunov) and brilliantly showy pianism, punctuated in the middle by a barefaced borrowing or an imperfect memory of the furiant from Smetana's The bartered bride. It's good, not only at these imitations or copyings, but at timing and dramatization: a new idea always arrives before the previous one has outstayed its welcome, and usually with an element of surprise to it, like the abrupt lurch from Russia to Bohemia, like the equally sudden sombre adagio (cue for a great deal of agreeable pianistic barnstorming) between the cossack dance that greets Smetana's arrival and the abrupt, hurtling coda.
Respighi challenges these gifts severely in the so-called Toccata (in all but name a full-length three-movement piano concerto), where the music is nearly all slow or very slow for the first 20 minutes or so. He passes the test handsomely, by combining in his opening movement elements of rondo form and of a fantasia-dialogue between soloist and orchestra. It is freely episodic, in short but with enough repetition (including two disconcerting lurches into one of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies) and development to hold it together whilst one is enjoying Respighi's leisurely discursiveness. The central (also slow) movement is simpler, and it can afford to be: both its main ideas, a florid arioso for the soloist and a more suave variant for oboe, later full strings, are long-spanned. Both, like much of the Toccata, are in Respighi's neo-Bach vein, which reappears in the ingenious finale: a short themelet here, but one capable of surprisingly varied metrical juggling, and of generating an entire interpolated scherzo between the Bachian figurations of the cadenza and the brilliant coda.
The Tre corali are in fact all Bach transcriptions though the booklet won't tell you this. The first is for luscious, full and grainy strings, the second is quite weird, with a trumpet bafflingly required to play with a ''comic vibrato''; the third is a lovely version of Wachet auf, mostly quiet, slowly filling out to a majestic entry of the full brass. The Belfagor overture is an independent concert piece based on themes from Respighi's comic opera: a sprightly scherzo with, again, lyrical music (with Slav overtones?) arriving immaculately on cue to leaven and ultimately to combine with the predominant jollity. Admirable performances, finely recorded.'
Respighi challenges these gifts severely in the so-called Toccata (in all but name a full-length three-movement piano concerto), where the music is nearly all slow or very slow for the first 20 minutes or so. He passes the test handsomely, by combining in his opening movement elements of rondo form and of a fantasia-dialogue between soloist and orchestra. It is freely episodic, in short but with enough repetition (including two disconcerting lurches into one of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies) and development to hold it together whilst one is enjoying Respighi's leisurely discursiveness. The central (also slow) movement is simpler, and it can afford to be: both its main ideas, a florid arioso for the soloist and a more suave variant for oboe, later full strings, are long-spanned. Both, like much of the Toccata, are in Respighi's neo-Bach vein, which reappears in the ingenious finale: a short themelet here, but one capable of surprisingly varied metrical juggling, and of generating an entire interpolated scherzo between the Bachian figurations of the cadenza and the brilliant coda.
The Tre corali are in fact all Bach transcriptions though the booklet won't tell you this. The first is for luscious, full and grainy strings, the second is quite weird, with a trumpet bafflingly required to play with a ''comic vibrato''; the third is a lovely version of Wachet auf, mostly quiet, slowly filling out to a majestic entry of the full brass. The Belfagor overture is an independent concert piece based on themes from Respighi's comic opera: a sprightly scherzo with, again, lyrical music (with Slav overtones?) arriving immaculately on cue to leaven and ultimately to combine with the predominant jollity. Admirable performances, finely recorded.'
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