Musical Invention Orchestral music by Ottorino Respighi - excites GERALD FENECH '... passionately performed and sumptuously recorded ...'

Born in Bologna in 1879, Ottorino Respighi belongs to a generation of composers who were more groomed in the European mould rather than the Italian one. It was the father who initiated his son on the path of music, and when he was old enough to start studying music seriously, his teachers were none other than Giuseppe Martucci, one of the first to champion Wagner's music in Italy, and Luigi Torchi, a musicologist who pioneered the study of ancient music, and who awakened Respighi's interest in the music of that era. Subsequent teachers were Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in St Petersburg and Max Bruch in Berlin. Indeed, Respighi's career as a composer was forged by some formidable names, and this is reflected in his symphonic works which are full of colour, rhythm and harmonies that are as thrilling as they are pictorially powerful...

OTTORINO RESPIGHI

BIS RECORDS

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

ITALY

BELGIUM