Ottorino Respighi - Belfagor Overture; Toccata; Tre Corali; Fantasia slava (Edward Downes; Geoffrey Tozer)

Information

Composer: Ottorino Respighi

1. Belfagor Overture
2. Toccata for piano & orchestra
3. Tre Corali: 1. Lento assai
4. Tre Corali: 2. Andante con moto e scherzando
5. Tre Corali: 3. Andante
6. Fantasia slava for piano & orchestra

Geoffrey Tozer, piano (2, 6)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Edward Downes, conductor

Date: 1994
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209311

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Review

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.

-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone

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Ottorino Respighi (9 July 1879 – 18 April 1936) was an Italian composer and musicologist. He is best known for his orchestral music, particularly the three Roman tone poems: Fountains of Rome (Fontane di Roma), Pines of Rome (I pini di Roma), and Roman Festivals (Feste romane). His musicological interest in 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century music led him to compose pieces based on the music of these periods. Although Respighi was known primarily as composers of instrumental and orchestral music, he also wrote a number of operas, the most famous of which is La fiamma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottorino_Respighi

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Edward Downes (17 June 1924 – 10 July 2009) was an English conductor. Downes was noted for his championing of British music, including music by George Lloyd, Alan Bush, Peter Maxwell Davies and Malcolm Arnold. He was associated with the Royal Opera House from 1952, and with Opera Australia from 1970. He was also well known for his long working relationship with the BBC Philharmonic (Chief Guest Conductor, Principal Conductor, Conductor Emeritus) and for working with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra. Within the field of opera, he was particularly known as a conductor of Verdi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Downes

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Geoffrey Tozer (5 November 1954 – 21 August 2009) was an Australian classical pianist and composer. A child prodigy, he composed an opera at the age of eight and became the youngest recipient of a Churchill Fellowship award at 13. His career included tours of Europe, America, Australia and China. Tozer had more than 100 concertos in his repertoire, many of which were recorded by him for the Chandos label, beginning with the works of Medtner. Tozer won numerous awards and much recognition worldwide, but suffered comparative neglect in Australia during the last years of his life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Tozer

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