Respighi: Pines of Rome; Fountains of Rome etc
RAI National Symphony Orchestra/Robert Trevino
Ondine ODE 1425-2 67:16 mins
The strengths of this performance immediately leap out in the warm, sinuous opening to Fountains of Rome, with elegant, sensuous woodwind solos and, at the opening of the second movement, in the roughness of the brass. This is not music that needs to be too polite, and it’s good to hear the Italian musicians throwing themselves into it with such affectionate abandon. At climaxes there may be a little loss of detail in the sound, but the overall sweep is utterly convincing.
In Roman Festivals, the orgiastic mood is strongly projected right from the start, and the contrasting chorale has an air of nobility, before it’s interrupted by more discordant music. The increasing religious fervency of the procession in the second movement contrasts with the echoes of Petrushka in the October harvest celebrations in the third, although Stravinsky would never have written the sweeping Italianate string melody, played with loving rubato and soaring tone. A little more rudeness in the drunken trombone glissandos in the final movement wouldn’t go amiss, but the cacophonous ending is riotous.
Pines of Rome is the most popular of the three, from its glistening opening to the inexorable march of the Roman army into the capital. Once more, Trevino shows his acute sense of pacing, not just in this final build-up, but in the shaping of the whole piece, with even the pre-recorded nightingale in the third movement emerging naturally out of the flow of the music. Martin Cotton