Ottorino Respighi - Sinfonia Drammatica; Belfagor Overture (John Neschling)

Information

Composer: Ottorino Respighi

• Sinfonia drammatica, P. 102
• Belfagor (ouverture per orchestra)

Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège

John Neschling, conductor

Date: 2015

Label: BIS

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Review

Completed in June 1914, the Sinfonia drammatica is essentially an expression of Respighi’s anxieties about the impending First World War. At its premiere a year later, however, when Italy was moving towards entering the conflict on the allied side, the score was criticised as overly Germanic. Elsa Respighi’s subsequent failure to mention it in her biography of her husband, together with her statement that his first ‘characteristic’ work was The Fountains of Rome in 1916, has led to its frequent dismissal.

Listening to John Neschling’s recording, you can understand the the initial controversy. The influences are, in fact, as much French as German: Franck’s D minor Symphony is the structural model; Debussy lurks behind the chordal woodwind-writing. The main debt, however, is to Strauss’s Elektra, from which its five-note principal theme derives, and the turbulent mood of which it to some extent replicates.

‘Drammatica’ is an indication of tone rather than content, and this is a score that seems to be in constant, violent motion, though there are also flashes forwards to The Pines of Rome in the closing peroration, with its massive crescendo over a steady, repetitive pulse. Neschling admirably sustains the fever pitch throughout – nothing becomes overblown or unduly hysterical – and the playing is first-rate in its dark intensity and force.

The filler is the Belfagor overture, reworking material from an unsuccessful 1923 opera of the same name about the devil assuming human form in order to corrupt the virtuous heroine Candida. It’s an attractively scored piece of diablerie, superbly played.

— Tim Ashley

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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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John Neschling (born May 13 1947, Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian conductor. He studied under Hans Swarowsky and Reinhold Schmid in Vienna, and under Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa in Tanglewood. Neschling has been music director of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon, Sankt Gallen Theater in Switzerland, Teatro Massimo in Palermo and the Bordeaux Opera. During the twelve years under his leadership (1997–2008), the São Paulo State Symphony became a first rate international orchestra, and recorded a series of CDs of Brazilian and international music, winning five Diapason d'Or and one Latin Grammy.

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