Italian's tone poems are more than musical showpieces

Italian's tone poems are more than musical showpieces

By Mark Kanny, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, February 8, 2012



Orchestral showpieces often don't get the respect they deserve, despite their popularity. Writing effectively for orchestra is a skill and an art, which is a big part of the appeal of music such as the tone poems of Ottorino Respighi.

"They're showpieces, but, if well done, they are more than that," Pittsburgh Symphony music director Manfred Honeck says. "They are by an Italian who describes in impressive ways his own country and way of life. They are masterpieces that go into history."

Honeck will lead the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in a program combining two Viennese classics and two of Respighi's tone poems at concerts Friday and Sunday at Heinz Hall, Downtown.

The program will open with Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 1, which announces from its first two chords that a new and exceptionally imaginative composer has begun expanding the music world he inherited from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn.

Then, Lars Vogt will be the soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 16, which demonstrates the new scope and maturity this composer found when he moved to Vienna.

Neither Mozart nor Beethoven handled the orchestra in a way that qualifies as an orchestral showpiece, although they were adventurous in their own ways for their time. Hector Berlioz created a new way of writing for orchestra in 1830 in his programmatic "Symphonie fantastique," and codified his insights in a treatise on instrumentation. That treatise was revised by another supreme orchestrator, the composer Richard Strauss, to include the advances of Richard Wagner.

Respighi's personal studies were with another master, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who also was Igor Stravinsky's teacher.

"I would say in the Italian world Respighi was comparable to Richard Strauss, a composer who uses all the colors on purpose. What a wonderful idea it was to have a bird recorded (for the third movement of 'Pines of Rome'). No one had done it before, not even Richard Strauss," Honeck says.

Yet, for all Respighi's mastery of orchestration per se, it is his poetic sensibility that lingers most after hearing "The Fountains of Rome," which will open the second half of weekend concerts.

Respighi prefaced his score with the note, "In this symphonic poem, the composer has endeavored to give expression to the sentiments and visions suggested to him by four of Rome's fountains contemplated at the hour in which their character is most in harmony with the surrounding landscape ... ."

"The Pines of Rome" is Respighi's most performed composition, and will conclude the concert with the pomp of Roman legions returning in triumph.

"You can believe the soldiers marching in the final section, or earlier, you feel the darkness and dread of the catacombs," Honeck says.

Pittsburgh Symphony audiences heard a neglected Respighi masterpiece in November 2006 when Gianandrea Noseda led a performance of a theme and variations called "Metamorphoseon."



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