If I Could Choose Only One Work By...RESPIGHI

It Would Have To Be...Three Botticelli Pictures
One of the most perfectly illustrative pieces of music ever penned, and an exquisite blend of old and new so characteristic of this composer.

The List So Far:
1. Ravel: Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Ballet)
2. Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
3. Schubert: String Quintet in C major
4. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
5. Mahler: Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”
6. Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker
7. Debussy: Preludes for Piano (Books 1 & 2)
8: Handel: Saul
9. Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro
10. Brahms: String Sextet No. 2 in G major
11. Vaughan Williams: Job
12. Bach: Goldberg Variations
13. R. Strauss: Four Last Songs
14. Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust
15. Haydn: “Paris” Symphonies (Nos. 82-87)
16. Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
17. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor
18. Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor
19. Chopin: Preludes
20. Verdi: Rigoletto
21. Roussel: Symphony No. 2
22. Copland: Appalachian Spring (complete original ballet)
23. Grieg: Peer Gynt Suites Nos. 1 and 2
24. Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
25. Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2
26. Rimsky-Korsakov: Opera Suites (Scottish National Orchestra/Järvi) Chandos
27. Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire
28. Smetana: Ma Vlást
29. Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
30. Bizet: Carmen
31. Elgar: In the South
32. Sullivan: The Mikado
33. Dvořák: Symphony No. 8; Cello Concerto (Piatigorsky/Munch/Boston Symphony) RCA
34. Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies
35. Monteverdi: Orfeo
36. Scarlatti: Sonatas
37. Schumann: Fantasie in C, Op. 17
38. Berg: Wozzeck
39. Hermann: Psycho (film score)
40. Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini
41. Purcell: Dido and Aeneas
42. Holst: Suites for Military Band
43. Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex

[Archimusik]

I’ve got to hand it to Dave - he got this exactly right. The Botticelli suite is a masterpiece of short form composition and orchestration. The “Adoration of the Magi” is absolutely splendid.

[andreashelling]

I agree with u with this one, that piece is totally mastery of colour and deep...

[johnjohnjhorton]

My choice would be Belkis; wonderful piece of eastern exoticism. Great orchestration, exciting music, very colourful and the music does transports one’s mind to some wonderful middle eastern land. Lovely mystical and very colourful, opening leading on to a great finale. It is up there with his one time teacher Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Antar (well perhaps not as good but certainly in the same room as those two great pieces).
There is a great recording by Geoffrey Simon and the Philharmonic but I like Oue and the Minnesota, they bring out the shear beauty of the piece where as Simon is more about the power.
In conclusion, it is a wonderful, beautiful, dramatic, decadent piece of exoticism and on a cold, wet and grey day in England that can be a very good thing.

[alancraig]

Excellent choice. I actually just got to know this work only about a month ago when I got the CD with John Neschling and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liege on Bis. I'm not sure how, after 30 plus years of listening to classical music, I had never been aware of this glorious piece.

[johannesbluemink]

Hurray! My personal favorite also! Thanks Mr. Hurwitz.

[mancal]

I so love when the choice is not obvious, however good the obvious choice might have been.

[carlconnor]

My choice too. Watching the Dave’s faves Respigi by Orpheus video got me to listen to them in earnest. Yes, they’re so beautiful!

[rafaszczepkowski]

Waiting for my two favourite composers lately:

CPE BACH - it is a difficult choice between orchestral and piano music. Maybe we need to meet halfway and pick Concerto for Harpsichord and Pianoforte E-flat Major? I doubt it is most beautiful CPE's work, but it is quite unique and grasp this short moment when "klavier" instruments start to diversify - modern piano in statu nascendi. This concerto is an answer for question "how to use the difference".

TELEMANN - is it your "Scarlatti" case? We need to have more of them to understand significance of his work? My vote is for Der Getreue Music-Master, it is more than "one album", but what a wealth!

[sppolly]

I’m not sure if I’ve seen any calls for Carl Maria von Weber. No surprises from me: Der Freischutz. The definition of early Romanticism and such a wonderfully lyrical opera even if the plot is a touch daft. The invention in the Wolf’s Glen scene alone wins it for me. It doesn’t get much attention live these days, certainly not where I’m sitting, but I am very fond of it and it was so influential in Germanic circles. If you want to go alternative I suppose you could get an album of overtures so you don’t miss out on the Oberon overture. Or one of the Clarinet Concerti? Oh this is so hard!

[macmadnes]

I’m absolutely loving this series so far! One of the most creative and wholly entertaining things yet that I’ve seen from this channel. Also a great thought exercise as well

Here’s some of the folks I’d like to see your take on in future videos!
(1) Telemann
(2) Hindemith
(3) Seeger
(4) Crumb
(5) Glass
(6) Barber
(7) Penderecki
(8) Lutoslawski
(9) Saariaho
(10) Bernstein
(11) Tan Dun
(12) Grainger
(13) Still

Thanks so much for all your work, and get well soon!

[marktanney]

Really enjoyed this. Such beautiful orchestration. So glad to learn of the Three Botticelli Pictures

[gregdecker]

thank you once again, David. have been a Respighi fan for a long time....thanks for this insight into the Three Boticellis

[DavidSmith-xdwi]

La Sensitiva is a wonderful and beautiful composition. My go to recording features Dame Janet Baker with Richard Hickox conducting the City of London Sinfonia.

[georgeholoubek]

Very good choice, Mr. David. Hard to argue with that one. However, in my humble opinion, it would have been Ancient Airs and Dances. It's a gorgeous work and has the qualities of early works you mention. You also mentioned Antonnio Vivaldi and I think he's still missing from your list. My pick would be "L' Estro Armonico." The harmonies among the strings are stunningly gorgeous and its solo lines are filled with soaring grace and style. Just my 2 cents.

[brucegelman]

Resphigi taught Ralph Vaughn Williams and for my money was the precursor to Morricone.Great choice!!

[LilYungSatch]

My first guess was his nocturne for piano. It my second guess was right haha. I also love the Botticelli pictures; specifically the birth of Venus with that rising motif when it ramps up

[rhonda]

I really enjoyed the Three Botticelli Pictures and listened to it multiple times but for me it is edged out by The Birds. I just feel in love with The Birds. I have a clear bird feeder attached to my mother's window and she lies in her hospital bed and watches them all day so I played the piece for her and she loved it too. EMI Classics has a 2 CD digital recording compilation of Respighi streaming 2 hours and 16 min which has both pieces by the Academy Of St. Martin In The Fields conducted by Neville Marriner that I loved but my pick is just The Birds since it actually made my mother smile which is no easy thing - lol.

[LocoFocoLit]

Precisely what I would have chosen. In fact, as I started watching, but was ignorant of your pick, I chose Trittico Botticelliano. A brilliant piece. Lovely beyond words — or pictures.

[MichaelCattermole]

A very good choice, but my vote goes to the stunningly beautiful Concerto Gregoriano (in effect a violin concerto). In compositional terms Respighi seems always to have had one foot rooted in the distant past, and the other exploring more modern 20th century idioms - the Concerto Gregoriano is a prime example of this, albeit inexplicably neglected. The concerto utilises plainsong and Gregorian chant elements, and these are expressed in music of beguiling beauty and lyricism. And yes, the work contains examples of the full-on orchestral tutti writing that we have come to expect from Respighi, though the prevailing mood throughout the work is meditative. I was lucky enough to have witnessed a performance of the Concerto Gregoriano during the 2021 season of the BBC Proms here in London, after having spent a lifetime thinking I would never hear the piece 'live' in concert. The concert I attended was part of the return season after the 2020 COVID outbreak, and so it was memorable for all kinds of reasons. Incidentally, when is Chandos going to box up their splendid series of Respighi orchestral recordings? I'm sure there would be an appreciative market waiting out there.

[barryguerrero]

Yes, excellent choice. I might also go with "Church Windows", but "C.W." requires a really good performance.