Rome's Fountains and Pines

RECORDINGS OF THE WORKS

Claude Debussy: Nocturnes

The concert plays an excerpt of the work.

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Rome's Fountains and Pines

Description

We start in Paris and end in Rome. The concert opens with Debussy's Nuages (Clouds), the first of his Trois Nocturnes, which he completed in 1899. In the original programme note from 1900–01, Debussy described the whole work's kinship with "the unchanging aspect of the sky and the slow, melancholy movement of the clouds, dissolving in a grey, gently coloured white glow". He later mentioned that he connected Nuages with the experience of the effect of the clouds over the Seine in Paris. A fascinating sonic journey awaits – up into the clouds. The Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür composed his work Illuminato for Nils Mönkemeyer, who is also the soloist this evening. He is one of the greatest names on the viola in the world and has a busy calendar as a soloist, chamber musician and as a professor in Munich. Illuminatio for viola and orchestra could be seen as a pilgrimage towards the eternal light, the composer has said. And in general he believes that "music must contain everything – overwhelming power, clarifying light, infinite gentleness and the deepest darkness. Rage, pain, remorse. Everything that makes us human. And the gentle touch of redeeming love". In the second half of the concert we go to Rome with the Italian composer Ottorini Respighi. He was born and raised in Bologna, where he trained as a violinist and later as a composer. He developed an early strong interest in orchestration – an art he refined during a stay in St. Petersburg, where he worked with Rimsky-Korsakov. This Russian influence gave Respighi's music the richness of colour and the masterly command of the orchestra's sound that later became his trademark. Respighi settled in Rome, where he both taught and composed. It was the city and its history, nature and architecture that inspired his most famous work, the so-called Roman Trilogy – Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome and Roman Festivals. This evening we get the first two. Fountains of Rome was the first great breakthrough in Respighi's trilogy. The idea was to portray four of Rome's fountains at different times of the day – not merely as architectural objects, but as living pictures of the city, its rhythm and its historical atmosphere. He had himself walked through the city at different times of the day and studied how the colours and the movement of the water changed. Among the four is the most famous – the Trevi Fountain. The fountains are man-made, while the pines represent nature. Respighi chose four places in Rome where the pine trees play a particularly iconic role: I pini di Villa Borghese, Pini presso una catacomba, I pini del Gianicolo and I pini della Via Appia. In this work, which appeared eight years after the fountains, Respighi goes even further in his orchestral imagination. He incorporates, among other things, recordings of the nightingale's song – some of the first use of "electronic sound" in classical music. Respighi does as Fellini does – uses something from reality and thereby creates an ending to his work of an almost cinematic character. Programme: Claude Debussy: Nocturnes, 1st movement – Nuages Erkki-Sven Tüür: Illuminato Ottorini Respighi: Fountains of Rome Ottorini Respighi: Pines of Rome