Ottorino Respighi - Concerto in modo misolidio; Fontane di Roma (Olli Mustonen; Sakari Oramo)

Information

Composer: Ottorino Respighi

• Concerto in modo misolidio, for piano & orchestra
• Fontane di Roma, symphonic poem

Olli Mustonen, piano

Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo, conductor

Date: 2009

Label: Ondine

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Review

Respighi was proud of his Concerto in modo misolidio, and rightly so. It’s a beautiful work, full of attractive melodies and effective writing for the soloist, and it deserves more exposure on the concert stage than it gets. This is hands down the best performance it has received thus far on disc. It’s so typical that Mustonen (rather like Leopold Stokowski), who can be so perverse in his performances of the standard repertoire, offers such a faithful rendering of the piano part when confronted with a novelty item. This isn’t to suggest that his performance lacks imagination or spirit: just the opposite. However, Respighi gives the soloist so much to do (much of the part is written on three staves) that there’s certainly less room to fool around gratuitously, and so Mustonen doesn’t.

The main competition in this work comes from Tozer/Downes on Chandos, a good performance that nonetheless sounds more than a touch stodgy next to this one. It takes some five minutes longer, almost all of it the central slow movement and concluding passacaglia. Mustonen and Sakari Oramo’s extra energy in these movements pays huge dividends, effectively belying any view of the work as pretty but formally ungainly and lacking excitement. This is certainly the version to choose to get to know the concerto, particularly if you’re coming to it for the very first time.

Only the coupling prevents this disc from getting the very highest rating. Actually, this is an excellent performance of Fountains of Rome, very well played, and glitteringly captured by the engineers. But there are many such, and it’s a skimpy disc-mate, bringing total playing time only to 53 minutes. It would have been so much nicer to have some more neglected Respighi–my vote would have gone to a new version of Metamorphoseon, which shares a similar aesthetic to that of the piano concerto, or perhaps even the similarly modal Concerto gregoriano for violin. Still, as the finest version available of the main item, this disc will be self-recommending to Respighi fans (and piano buffs too). [10/18/2010]

— David Hurwitz

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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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Olli Mustonen (born 7 June 1967) is a Finnish pianist, conductor and composer. He studied harpsichord and piano with Ralf Gothóni, and composition under Einojuhani Rautavaara. Mustonen's debut recording, featuring preludes by Shostakovich and Alkan, won a Gramophone Award in 1992. Since then he has recorded extensively for labels like Decca, RCA and Ondine, performing with leading international orchestras. He is also co-founder and director of the Helsinki Festival Orchestra. As a composer, his music reflects 20th-century idioms while drawing on influences from the 17th and 18th centuries.

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Sakari Oramo (born 26 October 1965) is a Finnish conductor. Born in Helsinki, he started his career as a violinist and concertmaster of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and studied in Jorma Panula's conducting class at the Sibelius Academy. Oramo was principal conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1998–2008), the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (2003–2012), and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (2008–2021). Since 2013, he has been chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with which he has recorded commercially for such labels as harmonia mundi and Chandos.

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