Ottorino Respighi - Ancient Dances & Airs for Lute (Antal Doráti)

Information

Composer: Ottorino Respighi

• Ancient Dances & Airs, Suite Nos. 1–3

Philharmonia Hungarica

Antal Doráti, conductor

Date: 1958

Label: Mercury

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Review

Why, you might wonder, bother to transfer to CD a 1958 recording of these charming and unpretentious suites, hardly ranking as eternal classics? It is a tribute to the engineering of Mercury, who in the early days of stereo followed up the spectacular success of their single-position microphoning, that the sound is so full, open and vivid in this digital transfer. Inevitably there is a trace of tape hiss, but that I find is only noticeable when you start listening out for it, and the wonder is that there seems to be so little restriction at the top and no boominess in the bass. The exposed violins may not be quite so sweet as in a modern recording, and there is an occasional inner harshness in tuttis, but this is elegant, lightly-scored music which presents relatively few textural problems for the engineers. As for the performances they are among the most sparkling that Antal Dorati has ever done, here making his first recording with the orchestra of exiles with which he later recorded his great Haydn series for Decca. When of the three suites only the third is currently available on CD, it is good to have a recommendable version of this convenient and attractive coupling.

— Edward Greenfield

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Ottorino Respighi (9 July 1879 – 18 April 1936) was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. He studied at the Liceo Musicale di Bologna, and also studied briefly with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).

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Antal Doráti (9 April 1906 – 13 November 1988) was a Hungarian-born American conductor. He was a student of Bartók, Kodály and Leó Weiner at the Liszt Academy. Doráti made his American debut in 1937 and was music director of the American Ballet Theater from 1941 to 1945. He went on to conduct the Dallas Symphony (1945–49), Minneapolis Symphony (1949–60), BBC Symphony (1963–66), Stockholm Philharmonic (1966–70), Washington National Symphony (1970–77), Royal Philharmonic (1975–78), and Detroit Symphony (1977–81). Over the course of his career he made over 600 recordings.

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