Hartford Symphony Orchestra - Pines of Rome - The Pines of Rome (1923-1924)

The Pines of Rome (1923-1924)

Born July 9, 1879 in Bologna. Died April 18, 1936 in Rome.

World Premiere: December 14, 1924
Last HSO Performance: November 18, 2006
Instrumentation: 3 flutes with 3rd doubling piccolo, 3 oboes with 3rd doubling English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 3 buccine (1 trumpet/2 horns), timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celeste, organ and strings
Duration: 23 minutes

Ottorino Respighi

Ottorino Respighi, born in 1879 into the family of a piano teacher in Bologna, was introduced to music by his father and progressed so rapidly that he began his professional training in violin, piano and composition at age thirteen at the city’s respected Liceo Musicale. He was granted leave from the Liceo in 1900 to play as a violist with the orchestra of the St. Petersburg Opera, and there he took lessons with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Respighi returned to Bologna the following year to complete his degree and then went to Berlin to study with Max Bruch. After spending another season in St. Petersburg, he settled in Bologna in 1903, working as a violinist and receiving his earliest notice as a composer. He was appointed to the faculty of Rome’s Santa Cecilia Academy in 1913 and had his first great success three years later with the tone poem The Fountains of Rome. He was appointed director of the Academy in 1923 but resigned from that position three years later to compose. Respighi toured internationally during the following years to conduct his works until a heart condition was diagnosed in 1931, and died in Rome of a heart attack on April 18, 1936; he was 56.

The Pines of Rome is the second work of Respighi’s trilogy on Roman subjects. The first was The Fountains of Rome of 1916; the last, Roman Festivals, dates from 1928. He wrote that The Pines of Rome “uses nature as a point of departure, in order to recall memories and visions. The centuries-old trees that dominate so characteristically the Roman landscape become testimony for the principal events in Roman life. 1. The Pines of the Villa Borghese. Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of Ring around the Rosy; mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening; and they disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to ... 2. The Pines near a Catacomb. We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant which re-echoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced. 3. The Pines of the Janiculum. There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Gianicolo’s Hill. A nightingale sings. 4. The Pines of the Appian Way. Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps. To the poet’s fantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline Hill.”