Ottorino Respighi - The Birds; Botticelli Pictures; Suite in G (Salvatore Di Vittorio)

Information

Composer: Ottorino Respighi

1. (01) Serenata, P. 54
2. (02-04) Trittico botticelliano, P. 151
3. (05-09) Gli uccelli (The Birds), P. 154
4. (10-13) Suite for organ and strings in G major, P. 58 (original version)

Kyler Brown, organ (10-13)
Chamber Orchestra of New York
Salvatore Di Vittorio, conductor

Date: 2014
Label: Naxos
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573168

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

This recording of the Three Botticelli Pictures has got to be the most texturally detailed, luminous, substantial performance yet captured on disc. Conductor Salvatore Di Vittorio makes sure that every strand of Respighi’s remarkable orchestration stands out in high relief, from the shockingly vivid violin trills at the start of “Spring” to the gently pulsating but constantly shifting motion of the waves in “The Birth of Venus”. It’s an amazing achievement, one that elevates a work all too easily dismissed as a sugary-sweet musical bon-bon. You can’t help but be impressed.

The Birds is equally well played and lovingly shaped by Di Vittorio and his band. Musically speaking the piece employs fewer glitzy effects, and so there are fewer coloristic surprises than we find in the Botticelli Pictures; but this is still a strikingly vivid rendering of this charming suite. Di Vittorio puts special emphasis on the programatic element: the squawking hens, the chirping cuckoo, or the smooth cooing of the nightingale, all effectively superimposed on Respighi’s stylized arrangements of earlier music. As with the Botticelli Pictures, the performance offers a rewarding experience if you really pay attention to what is going on in the music. There’s more than you might have thought. The brief (four-minute) Serenata for chamber orchestra that opens the program makes an absolutely delightful curtain-raiser to the two major works that follow.

Finally, this purports to be the world-premiere recording of the Suite in G major for strings and organ in its original, longer version. Sad to say, this is not major Respighi. Lasting slightly more than 20 minutes and containing four mostly slow movements, the piece is rather dull, even with Kyler Brown doing his best with the organ part. As so often happens when the organ is combined with an ensemble, there are some issues of focus and perspective that the engineers haven’t quite solved, and the strings in this context sound somewhat scrappy at the start–it could be a trick of the acoustic.

Still, the piece certainly is pleasant enough, and for the superb performances of the other two works this disc is well worth hearing. For this reason, I leave the organ suite out of the overall rating.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

More reviews:
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/respighi-the-birds-three-botticelli-pictures-suite
https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.573168&languageid=EN
http://www.amazon.com/Respighi-Birds-Three-Botticelli-Pictures/dp/B00IY30KWI

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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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Salvatore Di Vittorio (born 22 October 1967 in Palermo) is an Italian composer and conductor. Di Vittorio is Music Director and Conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of New York. He has been recognized as a leading interpreter of the music of Ottorino Respighi. In 2007, Di Vittorio gained considerable attention when he was invited to edit, orchestrate and complete several early works of Respighi. As a composer, his program music, focused on the program symphony or symphonic poem, is most influenced by Hector Berlioz, Richard Strauss and "follows in the footsteps of Ottorino Respighi".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Di_Vittorio
http://salvatoredivittorio.com/

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