Pins de Rome Les Oiseaux Fêtes de Rome

Description

It's hard to imagine a more dazzling introduction than that of the Pines of Rome, a symphonic poem composed by Respighi in 1924, the second part of a trilogy celebrating the Italian capital, which began eight years earlier with a tribute to four of its fountains. A cheeky trumpet (a B-flat as sonorous as it is dissonant) concludes the bright evocation of children's games under the conifers of the Villa Borghese. The Lento that follows takes us to the entrance of a catacomb. A plainchant melody rises from the depths of the mysterious sepulcher. There is no change in tempo for the third part, a dreamlike nocturnal scene on the Janiculum. A break from imitation this time, the nightingale announcing dawn sings through a recording of the real bird. The triple piano tam-tam accompanies the first steps of the final march on the Via Appia. To counterbalance this chilling beginning, the composer dreams of ancient heroism: "the trumpets resound, and a consular army, under the brilliance of the new sun, bursts into the Sacred Way to ascend to the triumph of the Capitol." Surely the century encountered Strauss's Zarathustra on the way... Concluding the triptych, the Roman Festivals of 1928 summon an even more gigantic ensemble. A half-dramatic, half-trumpeting introduction, as the audience crowds into the circus under a stormy sky. The horn players fall silent to let in, heavy on a religious theme, the Christian martyrs that the beasts are about to devour – they expire to the sound of the organ. A change of scene for The Jubilee: a procession of pilgrims progresses painfully to the muted violins and the duet of clarinet and bassoon. The excitement gradually builds as the holy city approaches, finally admired from the heights of Monte Mario (Allegro festoso). The October Festival then transports us to a castle in the countryside. Horns and trumpets set off for the hunt while the harvest is being gathered. As evening falls, the mandolin begins the serenade. Hardly enough time to dream before other festivities soon call us to the Piazza Navona where, a few months later, the crowd celebrates Epiphany in joyful disorder in honor of "the popular soul." Guaranteed spectacle! In 1927, Respighi borrowed five pages from the old masters arranged into a "Suite for Small Orchestra," an ensemble he has just experimented with in the Trittico botticelliano. Largely based on a piece taken from Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710), the Prelude of the Birds introduces the ornithological parade in all its majesty (Allegro moderato). The bestiary quickly shows its beak, and a noble Sicilian coos at the heart of the piece. From the "old Gallot of Paris," who died around 1690, the Italian appropriates the tender Dove, whose melancholic song is entrusted to the oboe (Andante espressivo). While La Poule échappée from the third Book of Harpsichord Pieces by Rameau (1728) needs no introduction, the precise origin of the song in C major of the Nightingale, attributed to an "anonymous English," remains a mystery. Pasquini closes this extraordinary garden as he opened it, with a toccata above a cuckoo's nest (Nicolas Derny).