Ottorino Respighi - Songs (Ian Bostridge; Saskia Giorgini)

Information

Composer: Ottorino Respighi

• Deità silvane, P107
• 6 Liriche, P90
• Nebbie, P. 64
• La statua, P. 122
• 4 Liriche, P125: Nos. 2 & 3
• 6 Pieces for Piano, P44: No. 3, Notturno
• 5 Canti all’antica, P71: No. 4, Bella porta di rubini
• Stornellatrice, P. 69
• 4 Scottish Songs, P143
• Canzone sarda, P. 155
• Le funtanelle, P. 164 (Canzone dell'abruzzo)

Ian Bostridge, tenor

Saskia Giorgini, piano

Date: 2021

Label: PentaTone

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Review

Ian Bostridge and Ottorino Respighi are two names I never imagined would be in the same sentence, much less the same recording – in a rare collection of songs that are usually heard mixed in with other early 20th-century composers who enjoyed symbolist texts and saturated harmonies. In the booklet notes, Bostridge explains that this music was a lockdown discovery for him in what he calls ‘a treasure house of colourful and imaginative musical writing’. I agree, and I suspect so would Veronika Kincses, whose 1999 Respighi disc (Hungaroton) is one of the few others out there, and covers much of the same repertoire but with a lush voice that makes her disc a polar-opposite experience to Bostridge’s.

The many regions of Respighi’s brain are intentionally visited by Bostridge. Besides composing his well-known tone poems, Respighi was a musicologist who was deeply interested in ancient airs and dances, a linguist who sympathetically harmonised Scottish texts (an interesting, not unwelcome cultural collision), and, more personally, a depressive human being who could and would open his soul to his listeners in ‘Nebbie’ (‘Mists’), one of his most famous songs. The Respighi who composed the lovely, picturesque Christmas oratorio Lauda per la natività del Signore is also heard in the wide-eyed innocence of two Christmas songs, ‘Le repos en Égypte’ and ‘Noël ancien’.

The core of the recital is songs written to texts by such as Gabriele D’Annunzio, Antonio Rubino and like-minded poets, some of which can seem affected: one particular line by Vittoria Aganoor Pompilj, ‘Oh, to be plant, to be a leaf’ is set to music with a straight face. Respighi observed them all with great respect. Many of his through-composed songs use the poet’s stanzas like continuing chapters in a hothouse novel. On a micro level, hardly a semicolon passes without a poetic musical reaction.

The composer’s vast but precise use of harmony and colour – equal to and much like Debussy’s – is much in evidence in the consistently engrossing piano-writing: even the spare accompaniment of ‘Au milieu du jardin’ is a model of a few well-chosen notes. This master of musical description often limits himself to scene-painting, as in ‘Notte’, where he sets the scene and then allows the words to make their point. The solo-piano ‘Notturno’ included in the middle of the programme, beautifully played by Saskia Giorgini, is an apt continuation of the songs. And the vocal lines? Respighi had a number of female singers in his life, and these songs show they were quite well served.

Vocally, an echt British singer such as Bostridge might seem an unlikely interpreter and initially the outlook isn’t promising, with his nervous vibrato emerging strongly in the opening song. Soon he establishes a strong sense of cantabile, serving the rhapsodic qualities of the Italian text, reimagined with his own singular vocal resources. In the joyful ‘Le funtanelle’ (‘The Fountains’), Bostridge veers dangerously close to Italianate caricature. But in other songs he explores the lower depths of his range effectively in moments where the music calls for a sense of emotional desperation. Next, Bostridge is releasing an album of arias by Cavalli, Stradella, Cesti and Vivaldi. Might he be entering an Italian period?

— David Patrick Stearns

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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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Ian Bostridge (born 1964 in London) is an English tenor. He holds degrees in history and philosophy from Oxford and Cambridge and began his professional singing career at 27. Celebrated for his interpretations of Schubert and Britten, Bostridge has performed at top festivals and venues worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, La Scala and the Salzburg Festival. Acclaimed for roles like Aschenbach in Death in Venice and Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw, he has collaborated with leading orchestras and conductors. His albums have won major awards, including a Grammy and the 2020 ICMA Vocal Recording of the Year.

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Saskia Giorgini (born 1985) is an Italian-Dutch pianist. Trained at top institutions in Imola, Pinerolo, Fiesole and Salzburg, she won the International Mozart Competition in 2016. She has performed at prestigious venues worldwide, including Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein and Suntory Hall, and with orchestras such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony. Known for her chamber collaborations with artists like Ian Bostridge and Janine Jansen, she has released acclaimed recordings for Brilliant Classics and PentaTone. Giorgini is also a professor at the Anton Bruckner University and a juror for major piano competitions.

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