A new Respighi biography

[adriano]

Although Respighi cannot be considered an "unsung composer" anymore, I would like to introduce an excellent 263-page biography of Respighi by Michael Webb, which was published last year.

On the publishers's website, this book is promoted as "the first English language biography of Respighi" - a thing which is not true. However, on the book back cover it says "this is the first full-lenght English language biography..."

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/ottorino-respighi-his-life-and-times/

Unfortunately the publisher does not mention who the autor is, and there is not even a back-cover introduction of him - as it should generally be done in connection with such books. So, who is he?

The appendix do also include a short biography of Elsa Respighi and two indexes (by names and by works). There is no (at least a select) bibliography and no (at least a select) discography - and this is quite a disappointment - to all "first English" readers!

One of the author's main concerns is to reveal the numerous mistakes Elsa Respighi made in her own biography of Ottorino - which is a very welcome aspect, revealing that the authour has done an excellent research!

Potito Pedarra and I were a bit suprised that the author did not find it necessary to enter in contact with two Respighi specialists like us. Still, we have the honour of being mentioned in a couple of short footnotes  - and Pedarra's work catalogue is reproduced in the appendix. After all, Pedarra and I had been personally acquainted with Elsa from 1977 till her death in 1996 - and I had been a close friend of her.

In his introduction, Mr. Webb also mentions my indignant letter of January 2000 to the BBC Music Magazine, in connection with an article by Jeremy Siepmann, entitled (as far as I remember) something like "Mussolini's favourite composer" - this at the time I was presiding a short-lived "Respighi Society". This letter still survives in the internet:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/respighi/bbc.htm

Michael Webb also quotes (and appreciates) Christoph Flamm's monumental study "Ottorino Respighi und die italienische Instrumentalmusik von der Jahrhundertwende bis zum Faschismus" (Laaber Verlag, 2008, 917 pages - dedicated to Potito Pedarra!). But Flamm too does not figure on Webb's acknowledement list, which means that Flamm too, he was never contacted. In my opinion, when one writes such an important biography, he should enter in contact with specialists and authours which had previously dealt with the subject. Collegiality, fairness and respect should be a rule amongst musicologists (although this is more often not the case). Flamm, incidentally, honours me in three footnotes - two of them to criticize passages of my Marco Polo liner notes.

Nevertheless, I strongly recommend this biography - revealing a lot of yet unknow biographical details on Respighi, which also the publisher considers "the most performed Italian composer of the twentieth century".

[Alan Howe]

Thank, Adriano.

Are there any important works by Respighi yet to be recorded?

[adriano]

Well, since an eternity I still hope for a really complete "Belkis". That DVD semi-staged live performance from Stuttgart is not acceptable, even though musically OK. We discussed this teme earlier on in here.


PS. The new Chandos CD of the "Roman Triology" conducted by John Wilson is super, but nothing new, compared to earlier interpretations with the principal aim of producing sonic showcases. If one goes back to mono performances with Toscanini or earlier stereo versions with Reiner & Co., one does realize that it's not a studio mix makind a good recording, so one not really feels always the to be confronted with new technical revelations. I call such productions "operating table" performances, where everything has been layed bare open in detail, so that every little instrument must be heard at any cost.
Even Chandos's earlier versions by Geoffrey Simon and Yan Pascal Tortelier are, in my modest opinion, musically better...
And I just wonder where the money is comng from, for such an expensive production recordings works of which dozens of other interpretations already exist since ages; are enough people going to buy this in order to cover these costs??

[Alan Howe]

...not to mention Enrique Bátiz on Naxos!

[MartinH]

The new Chandos is very welcome because it's in SACD format, for those few of us who care. Put the disk in, crank up the volume and it's utterly thrilling. The end of Pines packs a punch. Your hair stands on end. The only previous SACD of the trilogy I have is the extremely fine BIS recording from Sao Paulo. Same effect. No matter how good the sonics or the musicality, no mono or stereo only recording can compare. There's no comparison. Multi channel SACD or Blu Ray is astonishingly life like. I sure hope Chandos and Bis keep putting out SACDs for a long time and cover more of the repertoire. People who live in apartments in large cities may not be able to experience surround sound to its full potential, which is unfortunate.

Respighi in my opinion is one of those close-to-being-unsung composers. He sure wrote a lot of unsung music. As a player in orchestras for 45 years the only works I have ever played: the Roman Trilogy, Ancient Airs and Dances and the arrangement he did of those Rossini tunes. There is vast amount of his music known only to record collectors I'm afraid. I'd love to play Church Windows but probably never will.

Even before the pandemic audiences were getting older and smaller. Orchestras are always trying to find ways to market the classics to younger people with little success. Conductors haven't woken up yet and realized that they need to play musical blockbusters: the movies have it figured out, so has television. Big, noisy, exciting, colorful! For a long time the symphonies of Mahler did the trick, but I sense people have tired of them. Bring out the big exciting scores of Respighi and composers in his generation. Give audiences a sonic thrill and stop boring them with endless repeats of the standard repertoire. I'll never try to convince anyone that Respighi's Sinfonia Drammatica is a masterwork, but it sure is fun to listen to!

[adriano]

Yes indeed, Alan - and the Batiz recording has also a wonderful nightingale performing :-)

[Alan Howe]

For a long time the symphonies of Mahler did the trick, but I sense people have tired of them

As with Bruckner, there's now an awful lot of Mahler out there, much of it mediocre and unnecessary. Very boring.

[regriba]

I really like to read composer biographies so this is most welcome news - and so shortly after the book on Humperdinck. I wasn't aware of another English-language biography on Respighi, apart from a translation of Elsa's book, which I haven't been able to get. But then I'm afraid that, since reading Imogen Holst's biography of her father, I'm generally rather suspicious of biographies written by relatives or close acquaintances. They may not be able to have the required distance to the subject. Though of course Imogen Holst almost went to the other etreme and hurt her father's reputation more than she helped it - at least so it seems to me. 

[adriano]

Elsa's biography is a very valuable book, in spite of all inaccurancies mentioned earlier. She considered it a "spontaneous gestation", a collection of notes she had accumulated during many years, hoping that one day a musicologst would use them for a monograhy. But no one seemed to be interested.
Her main concern (as one can read in her book's introduction) had been "immediate clarity". She also refers to the diaries of Claudio Guastalla's (Respighi's friend and libretto author) and to her and Ottorino's correspondence and to reports by Ottorino's relatives on details on the years before she had met him.
In all the years of our friendship I could learn from Elsa a lot of private, even very intimate details on her life with Ottorino - which was not always that easy one as one may learn from her biography. Elsa even told me that I was the first person getting to hear them. Respighi was a very complex personality; in a way, it was a 15 years younger Elsa who had "the pants on" in this marriage and who had made it possible that Ottorino's life would become a more quiet and organised one. She also acted as his secretary and manager. Elsa was a much stronger and realistic personality - which incidentally does not at all confirm the nonsense once published by the Grove Dictionary that Respighi was a "childish character"! I also remember Elsa telling me that the over-sensitive Ottorino would never have been able to survive World War II, that in a way she was glad he would not have to endure what she had to during those years, especially after their magnifcent villa on the Monte Mario had been confiscated and devastated by occupying American soldiers. She had to survive in a cellar - where she started composing again, after she had totally given up, in order to dedicate her full time to Ottorino. When her opera "Il Dono di Alcesti" had won the first prize on a state competition (one had to submit works under a pseudonym), as soon as her name was revealed, the press reported, in more or less this tone: "The widow of a Fascist has won a composer's prize". After this, Elsa immediately withdraw her submission and refused the prize.

Besides an abridged English translation (by Gwyn Morris) of Elsa biography (published by Ricordi in 1962), there is another English Respighi biography: it's Raymond Rosenthal's translation of Pierluigi Alvera's lavishly illustrated 80-pages biography, published in 1986 by Treves in New York:

https://www.abebooks.de/9780918367099/Portraits-Greatness-Respighi-Pierluigi-Alvera-0918367093/plp

In 1977 and 1979, whilst preparing my Respighi Centenary Exhibition for the Lucerne Festival, I recorded two conversations with Elsa - which I trasnlated and published on my website:

http://adrianomusic.com/resources/1977-1978-Elsa.pdf

(If not all the links should be working, this is due to a domain transfer - but it will be fixed soon).

[adriano]

@ MartinH

There are always more adventurous orchestras and chamber ensembles performing lesser-known Respighi pieces. Radio orchestras are (or were) mostly committed to such projects.
You will find below two (very incomplete) lists of live performance which I all have in my Respighi sound archive. I omit all performances of the Roman Trilogy, Ancient Airs and Gli Uccelli. This just to show some interesting "productions".

Please note that there also exists a unique performance of Respighi conducting "Gli Uccelli" at the Frankfurter Rundfunk in 1933.

Then we also have Opera: and here one should really not complain! In both lists I've concentrated on the years 1960 - till today.

CONCERT WORKS
1961 – Aretusa (Venice, La Fenice, cond. Antal Dorati)
1961 – Concerto gregoriano, Venice, La Fenice, cond. Antal Dorati)
1974(?) – Concerto in la minore (Pietro Spada, cond. Rudolf Albert – Münchner Philharmoniker)
1974 – Concerto in modo misolidio (Peto Spada, cond. Jiry Starek, RSO Stuttgart)
1974(?) – Tre preludio sopra melodie gregoriane (Pietro Spada - German Radio)
1974 – Lucrezia (Junge Schweizer Philharmonie, cond. Janos Mezsaros) - concert perfroamnce - on LP
1979(?) – Belkis, Suite (Köln, cond Alberto Erede)
1979(?) – Concerto a cinque (Köln, ond Pinkas Steinberg)
1979(?) – Adagio con variazioni (RAI Torino, cond. Arturo Basile))
1979(?) – Metamorfoseon (Munich, Radio, cond. Alfredo Antonini)
1979(?) – Ballata delle Gnomidi 8RAI Milano, cond. Ferruccio Scaglia)
1979(?) – Deità silvane (RAI Rome, cond. Pierluigi Urbini)
1979(?) – Sinfonia drammatica (RAI Torino, cond. Fulvio Vernizzi)
1979 – Toccata (RAI Torino, cond. Bruno Aprea)
1979 – Huntingtower Ballad (Lucerne, as a homage piece to my Respighi exhibition)
1979 – Ciaccona (Vitali-Respighi) (Città di Castello, cond, Sandor Vegh)
1980 – Pastorale (Tartini-Respighi) (Assisi, cond. Sandor Vegh)
1980 – Suite della Tabacchiera (Asissi, cond. Willy Gohl)
1980 – La Sensitiva (Torino, cond. Gavazzeni)
1982 – Quartetto dorico (Cherubini-Quartett, TV production)
1982 – Passcaglia in do minore (Bach-Respighi) (Torino, cond. Gabriel Chmura)
1986 – Suite for flute and strings and suite for strings (Lodi, cond. Giuseppe Gabarino)
1986 – Preludio, Corale e Fuga (Arena di Verona, cond. Umberto Cattini)
1986 - Doppio quartetto in re minore (Ensemble Garbarino, Lodi)
1992 – I Persiani and Lamento d'Arianna (Lugano, Radio) – originally intended to be issued by Claves
1993 – Berceuse, Leggenda, Di Sera, Serenata, Suite per archi e flauto and Fantasia slava (Milano, Rosetum, cond. Adriano Bassi) – issued on a limited CD
2009 – Deità silvane (Tokyo, cond. Nello Santi) – who also conducted Rossiniana on Swiss Radio


OPERAS
1958 – Lucrezia (RAI Milano, cond. Oliviero de Fabritiis) – with Anna De Cavalieri
1961 – Lucrezia (La Fenice, Venezia, cond. Ettore Gracis) – with Anna De Cavalieri
1967 – La bella dormente (RAI Torino, cond. Arturo Basile)
1971 – Belfagor (New York, cond. Eve Queler) – concert performance with Chester Ludgin on LP
1974 – Lucrezia (Junge Schweizer Philharmonie, cond. Janos Mezsaros) - concert performance - on LP
1976 – La campana sommersa (RAI Rome, concert performance cond. Bruno Bartoletti)
1980 – Maria Egiziaca (Assisi, cond. Ottavio Ziino) - on CD
1981 – La campana sommersa (Teatroo Verdi, Trieste, cond. Gianfranco Masini)
1981 – Lucrezia (Assisi, cond. Ettore Gracis) – on CD
1987 – Semirama (Teatro Massimo, Palermo, cond. Massimo de Bernard) – with Carol Neblett
(1987?) – La fiamma (Dutch Radio, cond. Edo de Waart) – with Felicity Palmer
1989 – La campana sommersa (Liceu, Barcelona, cond. Maximiliano Valdes) – with Montserrat Caballé
1990 – La fiamma (Teatro Real, Madrid, cond. José Collado – With Monserrat Caballé)
1997 – La fiamma (Rom Opera, cond. Gianluigi Gelmetti) – with Nelly Miricioiu  - on CD
2003 – La campana sommersa (Montpellier, cond. Friedemann Layer) – with Laura Aikin – on CD
2004 – Re Enzo (Bologna Conservatory, cond. Luigi Pagliarini)
2004 – Marie Victoire (Rome, Opera, cond. Gianluigi Gelmetti)
2005 – La bella addormentata (Spoleto Festival, Charleston, cond. Neil Goren)
2005 – La bella dormente (Teatro Comunale, Bologna, cond. Aldo Sisillo) – on CD
2009 – Marie Victoire (Deutsche Oper Berlin, cond. Michail Jurwoski) – on CD
2013 – Belkis (Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, cond. Gabiel Feltz) – on DVD
2016 – La campana sommersa (Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, cond. Donato Renzetti) – on DVD
2017 – La bella dormente (Teatro Lirico di Cagliri, cond. Donato Renzetti) – on DVD

These exclusive lists were prepared right now, by selecting items from my CDR and CD collection - just for interested UC members.
One should notice that in the years around the (1979) Centenary, some quite interesting programs were set up. Now, since 2006 Respighi has become public domain, one notices a terrific, almost alarmingly quantity of new CD productions. Today there is practically no lesser-known Respighi work which has been recorded at least twice. The known ones have reached astonishing quantities...
The 1979 issue of my "International Respighi Discography" counted around 850 items (inlcluding 78s). My next (2021) edition will list some 1500. In 1979 there were still only 266 recordings available - my first edition was a thin little brochure.
As a "recording" (or Discography "entry") I mean a recorded piece (or arrangement), excluding later re-issues on other labels and in other acoustic formats.

[regriba]

Thanks a lot for all this very interesting information 

[MartinH]

That is an interesting list. Of course in the USA we have no radio orchestras or public funded orchestras to do something similar. One of my blind spots has been Respighi opera - I guess it's about time to get some of those DVDs. 

I didn't realize that Respighi was in the public domain; given the steep rental rates for some of the music we've played in the past, this could be a  new opportunity.

[adriano]

So far I could not find any mentioning in Mr. Webb's Respighi biography that, for example, in September 1933, he conducted "Gli Uccelli" at the Hessische Ruundfunk in Frankfurt. I have a copy of this Radio document, revealing that Respighi was indeed an excellent conductor. And, so far, that may be the sole document of this kind.
A reminder: Those 78 rpm song recordings (from my collection) Elsa and Ottoringo Respighi recorded in Brazil in 1927 and that Welte Mignon roll he recorded in 1925 in New York (a four-hands version of "Fontane di Roma", together with Alfredo Casella) reveal him as an excellent pianist. On his "Concerto in modo misolidio", which has a very demanding solo part he used to excuse himself, saying that he had written it for his own modest finger technique...
In 1979 I issued the abovementioned songs on my own LP label. In 2005 I licensed them to a Pierian CD - which has become a rare item in the meantime. However, they are available as downloads:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Respighi+Pierian&i=dvd&ref=nb_sb_noss

[adriano]

Oh drear, there is more news about Respighi:

Another CD with (in my opinion totally unnecessary) four-hand versions of "Fountains and Pines of Rome" and "Ancient Airs":

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Respighi-Piano-Four-Hands-Biddau/dp/B07327FSHF/ref=tmm_acd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1599315129&sr=1-7

One of the pianists ("Norberto C. Respighi") appears to be a descendant of Respighi. His legal name is Cordisco, and he is surely not a direct descendant (the Respighis had remained childless).
It would have been fair that on his CD's cover, instead of "Norberto C. Respighi", he would mention his real (and legal) name "Cordisco" - as he later does in his liner notes. But in this way one may think that the "C." stays for a second forename and that his real family name is "Respighi" - a "trick" which I consider of rather dishonest kind. Surely the name of Respighi can open many door. We also have - in New York - a "New York Chamber Orchestra Ottorino Respighi" - who does record for Naxos - but so far, non of such kind in Italy - which would be more explicable. Another ensemble recording for Naxos i the "Alma Mahler Sinfonietta" - residing in Naples - no comment.

Mr. Crordisco lives in Paris; in 2018 he also wrote an illustrated Respighi biography (in French - and this time under his "full double" name):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ottorino-Respighi-Norberto-Cordisco/dp/2358840718/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Cordisco+Respighi&qid=1599315357&sr=8-1

(I consider the photographic cover montage of this book of rather bad taste)

... and there is a new CD by Chailly coming:
https://stage2.deccaclassics.com/en/catalogue/products/respighi-riccardo-chailly-12057

[Alan Howe]

... and there is a new CD by Chailly coming

Nice. But why no Feste romane?