The colour wheel turned up to 11

Respighi: Vetrate Di Chiesa, Il Tramonto, Trittico Botticelliano

As with earlier discs in this Respighi series from BIS,  John Neschling has the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege firing on all cylinders, which is such a plus for a composer who provides so many opportunities for the orchestra to show off. So it's quite a surprise to see that two of these three pieces didn't begin as rich and gaudy orchestral showpieces. Vetrate Di Chiesa (Church Windows) started out as Tre preludi sopra melodie gregoriane, three charming pieces written in 1919-21 for solo piano. In 1925 Respighi opened up and colourized these melodies, and added a fourth work as a bonus.  Listen to that opulent final piece, San Gregorio Magno:



This is wide-screen, Technicolor music, and it's not afraid of nudging up against effects some might find vulgar. It's great fun, so you might not notice at first how Neschling has his fine musicians playing with such determination and precision.

Il Tramanto (The Sunset) is a cantata based on a Shelley poem that Respighi wrote in 1914, for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. It's played here with a full complement of strings, and sung by the splendid soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci. Even without winds, brass, percussion and organ, everything I've said about colour in Church Windows is relevant here.  This is partly due to superb playing and singing, and partly because of the the 35-year-old composer's skillful blend of the styles of his compatriot Puccini and a couple of composers from the other side of the Alps: Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner. I'd never heard this music before, and my view of Respighi has gone up considerably now that I know it well.

The Trittico Botticelliano is my favourite Respighi work, and it receives a lavish recording here. Neschling translates Respighi's fine sense of both melody and orchestral colour, analogues of Botticelli's legendary line and colour, into a perfectly balanced performance. It's great to see this Brazilian conductor, who completely nailed the Villa-Lobos Choros series in his 2008 recordings with OSESP, also from BIS, doing the same on the other side of the Atlantic.

This is the second disc I've reviewed in 2018, and I'm pleased to be able to praise the cover design once again. I hope we can keep that streak going! It's based on a detail from the 1914 International Art Glass Catalogue by the National Ornamental Glass Manufacturers Association of the United States and Canada. You can download the entire catalogue in PDF format here at the Internet Archive; it's gorgeous!

The Continent of Ysaÿe

The Six Sonatas for Solo Violin op. 27 are by far the most popular work by Eugène Ysaÿe (I counted over fifty versions on CD at Amazon), I'm afraid to the exclusion of the rest of his music. Indeed, this new CD from Belgium contains the first orchestral music of his that I've heard in a very long time. A French reviewer has said "Ysaÿe is a continent, of which we know a peninsula: the sonatas for solo violin." This music is so appealing and it's written in such an accessible and romantic style that I'm very surprised that at least a few of these poèmes for violin and orchestra aren't part of the standard repertoire. It's high time, it seems, to explore the continent of Ysaÿe.

This is the second disc of Ysaÿe's orchestral music recorded by Jean-Jacques Kantorow and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege. The first, from 2014, featured works for orchestra with cello, violin and string quartet, and was well received by critics, with special notice taken of the commitment, warmth and passion of the orchestral musicians. In the new disc we have two young violinists featured: Svetlin Roussev, playing a Stradivarius violin in three of the works, and Amaury Coeytaux in the remaining four. There's certainly something about concertante works written by composer-performers for their special instrument, which was clearly apparent listening to Grazyna Bacewicz's violin concertos recently. The violin parts in these Ysaÿe poèmes are like a personal voice of the composer, and his violin sings beautiful but sad, or at least bitter-sweet, songs.