Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Sir Edward Elgar Karol Szymanowski Robert Schumann Franz Schreker Ottorino Respighi Chinese Lieder       Ottorino Respighi The Complete Songs for voice and piano Available at CHANNEL CLASSICS RECORDS Although Ottorino Respighi (1879 - 1936) nowadays is best known as the composer of highly coloured orchestral pieces, as Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome), Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome), and Feste romane (Roman Festivals), he also wrote a large number of very beautiful songs. “….he who knows Respighi’s songs can say he knows very much of him, since they represent the word where he seeks shelter in order to confide the secrets of his heart which he must keep hidden in the course of everyday life, where his soul can sing freely. An escape, one might say, that permits him the expression of a state of mind, a feeling, a sensation, in only a few pages of music….”   (Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo Respighi) Ottorino Respighi The Complete Songs for voice and piano       CCS 9396 Ottorino Respighi Complete Songs for voice and piano (vol. 1) Leonardo di Lisi tenor Reinild Mees piano   Listen to: Acqua from Deità Silvane (A. Rubino) (1917)       CCS 11998 Ottorino Respighi Complete Songs for voice and piano (vol.2) Leonardo di Lisi tenor Andrea Catzel soprano Reinild Mees piano   Listen to: Abbandono (A.Vivanti) (1909)       CCS 14998 Ottorino Respighi Complete Songs for voice and piano (vol.3) Leonardo di Lisi tenor Elisabetta Scano soprano Andrea Catzel soprano Reinild Mees piano   Available at CHANNEL CLASSICS RECORDS In his songs Respighi achieved a perfect form and an absolutely personal language. Strong melodies are accompanied by transparent, refined piano parts and structured in a harmonical pattern of modulations following the changes of mood in the poetry. In the celebrated song Nebbie, for example, he expressed threatening loneliness in a very dramatic way by the monotonous rhythm of accented, ‘naked’ chords. Respighi made use of light impressionistic or dark passionate sounds to illustrate texts by Antonio Rubino, Victor Hugo, Sully Prudhomme, Percy B. Shelley and other poets. Drawn to the sensual, decadent climate of the great master of Italian ‘Decadence’ Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938), he sought to convey the subtlety and colour of the poet's imagination in some of his most beautiful songs His interest in old Italian composers as Claudio Monteverdi is to be heard in the charming Cinque Canti all’antica for voice and piano, settings of 14th-century verses by Giovanni Boccaccio . Humour and a ‘popular’ sense finally inspired Respighi occasionally to write Italian, Tuscanian, Sardian, Armenian, French and Scottish folksongs.       back to top