Gli uccelli, better known as The birds is a wholly delightful aviary of orchestral colour and as presented here by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta under Tamas Vasary is utterly seductive. There is glorious oboe playing against softly luminous strings in ''La Columba'' (The dove) and ''Il Cucu'' (which doesn't need translating) is no less charming. Respighi's suite is mainly based on harpsichord and lute music by minor seventeenth- and eighteenth-century composers (although ''La Gallina''—The hen—uses an identically named harpsichord piece by Rameau). Respighi's delicious scoring transforms the source material enchantingly. The inviting opening ''Preludio'', so stylishly shaped, is based on an aria by Bernardo Pasquini and at its reprise to close the suite, Vasary lets it steal in most delicately, where in Dorati's famous and very characterful 1960 LSO version on Mercury its re-entry is more positive. While the Dorati version remains very enjoyable too, the softer focus of this splendid new Chandos recording adds warmth and atmosphere in a special way, and the ear is continually captivated by the glowing orchestral colours.
The same thing happens in the Three Botticelli Pictures, where the lambent Italianate evocation of the three paintings, which hang in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is bewitchingly realized. In the opening ''La Primavera'', the luscious trills of springtime birdsong are larger than life in the way of the pictorialism of Respighi's Roman trilogy. The second movement, depicting the ''Adoration of the Magi'', ingeniously quotes the hymn ''O come, o come Emmanuel'' and the closing evocation of ''The Birth of Venus'', brings an alluring, diaphanous sentience, and much delicacy of effect.
The Adagio for cello and orchestra is a transcription of an earlier work for cello and piano, and it is undoubtedly enhanced by its orchestration; it is a pleasant if not distinctive piece, elegantly played by Raphael Wallfisch. But what caps this collection as the Respighi Record of the Year is the inclusion of Il tramonto, an ecstatic and very beautiful setting of Shelley. The poem concerns two lovers, who at sunset together know ''the unreserve of mingled being'' and ''when the faint stars were gathering overhead'' look forward to enjoying the sunrise together, ''but when the morning came the lady found her lover dead and cold''. The soloist here is Linda Finnie who gives a radiantly lovely performance, and I can pay her no higher tribute than say that her singing reminds me of the young Tebaldi in her early Decca recordings of Puccini. Throughout this programme Vasary finds all the magic of Respighi's rapturous setting, and his subtle manipulation of the orchestral textures reminds one of the way he used to entice the ear by his shading of a Chopin Nocturne at the piano. The Bournemouth orchestral playing is wonderfully responsive to the Italianate aura of the music.
The recording is in the demonstration class, with the warm acoustics of Wessex Hall at Poole Arts Centre somehow transporting the listener to balmier Mediterranean climes.'