May 28, 2014

  • Resphigi Plays in Brazil

     

    Resphigi: Brazilian Impressions; La Boutique Fantasque
    Liege Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/John Neschling
    BIS 2050
    Total Time:  68:55
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    One of the most brilliant orchestrators of the 20th Century, Ottorino Resphigi, is best known for a series of 3 works depicting Roman forests, fountains, and festivals.  These amazing orchestral works are but a small fraction though of the composer’s output, but those willing to explore beyond those more familiar works will discover equally wonderful and evocative musical landscapes.  This month there are a couple of new releases featuring his music and this is the first of the CDs being reviewed here (the other is from Naxos, forthcoming).  His Brazilian Impressions (1927-1928) was composed after a visit to Rio de Janiero in 1927 which would find him exposed to a variety of local folk music and dances.  The resulting three-movement piece opens this new disc from BIS.

    The opening movement, “Tropical Night” is a gorgeously steamy and evocative piece of impressionism.  This nocturne, if you will, merely suggests Brazilian melody (primarily in an oboe line) along with a sensual rhythmic idea that appears interspersed in the movement.  “Butantan” depicts one of the great research facilities that Resphigi visited.  A biomedical research facility on the Sao Paulo University campus, the institute was a tourist attraction for much of the 20th century as it housed some 80,000 snakes and some half million poisonous spiders.  The more unusual nature of this scenario is well-captured in the resulting music with its plenty of sinuous ideas and even a final unsettling quote of the Dies irae.  After these somewhat more languid movements, the work concludes with the rhythmically exciting “Canzone e Danza” filled with Brazilian melodic ideas.  Besides the rather restrained orchestral scoring of the work, one interesting item to note is a similar approach to adding a piano in the third movement here to create bell sounds (similar to the more familiar Roman Festivals).  Perhaps one reason this piece lays in the shadow of other works is its rather unassuming nature.  The ideas unfold slowly and reward listeners upon repeated hearing.  It is an overall rather unassuming work, but no less brilliant.

    While Resphigi’s own pieces tend to overwhelm with their color and melodic inventiveness, one gets a real sense of his orchestration approaches in works borrowing upon earlier music.  One such piece is the ballet, La Boutique Fantasque.  Written in 1918 for Diaghelev’s Ballets Russes, the piece explores a variety of lesser-known works of Rossini from a collection of piano pieces and songs referred to as Peches de viellesse (‘Sins of Old Age’).  The period was rife with similar attempts of older music adapted for Dhiagalev including Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (from music by Pergolesi) and Tommasini’s less familiar The Good-humoured Ladies (based on Scarlatti).  In the ballet impresario’s conception, this would be more along the lines of the popular Die Puppenfee of Josepf Bayer.  The surrounding set and costumes would have a Fauvist flare.  The music itself features an overture that precedes a host of dances: a tarantella, mazurka, Cossack dance, can-can, waltz, nocturne, and a final galop.  This new release restores much of the connective material of the ballet score itself.  Often what is recorded is a truncated suite.  Here the music gets a chance to sparkle and shine with the less familiar transitions providing some greater context for the more familiar dances themselves.  The grander gestures in the “Mazurka” feel a bit drawn out, but makes dramatic sense as well as feels more musical to boot.  Some though may find it to overstay its welcome just a bit.

    John Neschling is a Brazilian-born conductor with a family tree that includes Arnold Schoenberg and conductor Arthur Bodanzky.  He served as principal conductor of the Sao Paulo symphony from 1997-2009, having made a critically-acclaimed release with the orchestra of more familiar Resphigi fare in 2011.  His approach to the opening movement of the Brazilian piece is a rather languid one, adding about 2 minutes to the overall playing time from that of some performances.  It works very well though as the music is so well shaped that it sort of just floats about with ideas appearing like zephyrs.  The final movement is always interesting to hear in light of the work of Villa-Lobos and the musical voices manage to be quite different with Resphigi tending toward a somewhat Romantic impressionistic approach.  The music for the ballet is simply one of the composer’s most delightful pieces.  Neschling’s performance restores some of the dramatic qualities of the score.  Now it feels more ballet-like and less like an exercise in orchestration.  The Liege players are simply amazing and respond to the push and pull of these pieces very well.