Respighi: Piano Concerto In A Minor / Toccata / Fantasia Slava

Description

Ottorino Respighi (1879 - 1936) Piano Concerto in A MinorToccata for piano and orchestraFantasia Slava for piano and orchestraRespighi is best known for his colourful pictures of Rome in the symphonicpoems, the Fontane di Roma, Pini di Roma and Feste Romane. Born inBologna in 1879, the son of a musician, he was taught the piano by his fatherand later entered the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, where his teachers includedFederico Sarti, and, for composition, Torchi and Martucci. An engagement as astring- player in St Petersburg in 1900 and 1901, and a return there in 1902-3,allowed him to embark on study with Rimsky-Korsakov, before his return toBologna, where he took his diploma in composition. For five years, from 1903 to1908, he was a member of the Quartetto Mugellini. He then spent some months inBerlin, where Nikisch conducted some of his transcriptions of earlier music,including Vitali's Chaconne and Monteverdi's Lamento di Arianna, tokensof his continuing interest in earlier periods of Italian music. He was also ableto take lessons from Max Broch. In 1913 he took a position as teacher ofcomposition at the Liceo di Santa Cecilia in Rome, later the Conservatorio, andin 1924 was appointed director of the same institution. In 1919 he married ElsaOlivieri Sangiacomo, his pupil and herself a singer and composer. In 1926 heresigned his position as director of the Conservatory and for the last ten yearsof his life devoted himself more fully to composition.Respighi was certainly one of the most important Italian composers of histime and won for himself an international reputation in concert tours throughoutEurope and in America. The first of the Roman symphonic poems, the Fontane diRoma, was completed in 1916, with I Pini completed in 1924 and the Festeromane in 1928. His Piano Concerto in A minor is a relatively earlywork, completed in 1902, and it is therefore natural that other influencesshould be apparent, elements that suggest earlier musical practices as much ascontemporary, although it was some years before his interest in Gregorian chantfound direct expression in his Concerto gregoriano for violin andorchestra, completed in 1921, and his Concerto in modo misolidio forpiano and orchestra, completed four years later. The Piano Concerto openswith a grandiose flourish, before more lyrical material is introduced. Thepiano-writing is often florid, idiomatic and demanding, in music that isthoroughly romantic in character, moving to a calmer central section, itsserenity shattered by the outburst that marks the final section of the work, adramatic finale, that brings its own moments of repose and of bravura.Respighi's Toccata for piano and orchestra was written in 1928, theyear of Feste romane, three years after the Concerto in modo misolidio.There is an impressive opening that has inevitable echoes of the Baroque inits abruptly dotted rhythms, with the introduction of a less characteristicmelodic element, notably from a solo cello in dialogue with the pia