Ottorino Respighi - Sinfonia Drammatica (Edward Downes)

Information

Composer: Ottorino Respighi

• Sinfonia drammatica, P. 102

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Edward Downes, conductor

Date: 1992

Label: Chandos

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Review

This latest recording of Respighi's Sinfonia drammatica (the third so far) is by a long way the best, and the consequence is that the work has never sounded more convincing. Of course Respighi doesn't so much reveal his influences as flaunt them: there are some moments which might almost be by Franck or Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakov or Scriabin, until you try to locate where Respighi borrowed them from. Nor does he make many bones about liking his own first movement so much that on finishing his development section he launches with unabated vigour into another. In the slow movement he's similarly so pleased with his adaptation of Franck's cyclic principle that you're almost surprised when he stops. Only in the finale does his ingenuity fail to disguise the fact that at one or two moments he hasn't much idea of what to do next.

To luxuriate in the piece as an hour of sumptuous textures and gigantic crescendos without worrying too much about its status as a major symphonic statement would be the obvious conclusion, were it not for two factors, both very clear in this outstandingly sympathetic reading, which seem to point in opposite directions. On the one hand it sounds scarcely like the familiar Respighi at all; puzzlingly, since his orchestral mastery is already mature and Fountains of Rome was written barely two years later. If this is in any sense a disappointment the emotional temperature of the symphony, on the whole dark, indeed dramatic, with many moments of tension and unease, is striking as an element of Respighi's personality that was only intermittently heard again, in the best of his operas. Is it a reaction to the darkness of the times (it was completed just before the outbreak of the First World War)? Whatever the impetus, it gives the symphony urgency at moments when it needs it, and a sense that Respighi, for all his indebtedness to others and his riskily distended structure, is engaged in something more earnest than mere orchestral self-indulgence.

I have not felt like this about the work before, and I attribute it to Sir Edward Downes's knack for jolting you into thinking again about pieces that are easy to patronize. This is a stunning performance, intensely responsive to the work's emotional core; it is most magnificently played and sumptuously recorded, and has such conviction to it that the indulgent smile (''poor old Respighi! Pretending to be a symphonist!'') is quite often wiped from one's face.

— Michael Oliver

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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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Edward Downes (17 June 1924 – 10 July 2009) was an English conductor. He began music studies early, earning scholarships that led to training with Hermann Scherchen. Downes had a long association with the Royal Opera House, conducting over 950 performances and becoming Associate Music Director in 1991. He was Music Director of the Australian Opera, notably conducting the first performance at the Sydney Opera House in 1973. He also held leadership roles with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic. Downes was a strong advocate of British composers, as well as Prokofiev and Verdi.

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