Record of the day: Ottorino Respighi, “Music for piano”

Ottorino Respighi
“Music for piano” (Cd Naxos 8553704)

A master of orchestral sounds, Ottorino Respighi is not the first composer who comes to mind when talking about piano music, but his production in this field, while not having any particular historical relevance for the instrument, is far from negligible and consists of music that is always very pleasant to listen to.
The numerous timbral possibilities of the keyboard led him to transcribe for piano four hands two of his most famous symphonic works, “Fountains of Rome” and “Pines of Rome”, while the piano is also the protagonist of works that see it together with the orchestra, such as the “Concerto in modo misolidio”.

A pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, Respighi learned from his Master not only to dominate the orchestra’s palette, but also a solid formal sense that allowed him to give life to complex thematic developments starting from short melodic cells.
This is the case of the “Sonata in F Minor”, a youthful work rediscovered and published fifty years after his death; a work with an intensely lyrical character and a piano writing that favours harmonic paths not immune to the influence of Brahms.

In addition to knowing the forms of the nineteenth-century Sonata, Respighi was a master of the short page, capable of sketching in a few strokes pages of notable freshness such as the group of “Six pieces for piano” of 1936, which from the initial “Valse caressante” demonstrate the interest that Respighi has always had for authors such as Debussy and Dukas, to which is added a personal use of melody with an archaicizing taste and a particular predilection for the grandiose (which sometimes did not allow him to avoid the traps of kitsch); noteworthy within the cycle is the delightful “Serenata-Intermezzo”, taken from a scene of his lyric opera Re Enzo, of 1905.

The most famous of his piano works are the “Preludi sopra melodie gregorian” from 1921. Respighi was among the first composers to look beyond the tradition of melodrama to recover pages that had been forgotten at the time, such as those of Palestrina and Monteverdi (he was among the first to create a modern version of “Orfeo”).
The style of antiquity is treated in a rhapsodic manner, with freedom, within a pianism that favours broad sonorities, with frequent use of octaves and chordal passages that sometimes seem to be inspired by organ writing.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical subjects.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: Un disco per ogni giorno dell’anno” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.