SCO, 17/01/2014

Respighi : Trittico botticelliano
Respighi : Il Tramonto (Renata Pokupic, mezzo-soprano)
Rossini : Overture to Tancredi
Rossini : "Oh patria!.... Di tanti palpiti" from Tancredi (Renata Pokupic, mezzo-soprano)
Menotti : Suite from Sebastian

Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Enrique Mazzola

I've said it before, I'll say it again; Respighi is one of the master orchestrators of all time.  I've known his major works, and a good selection of minor ones for a long time, but it's only relatively recently that I've started being able to 'see' them.  What I hadn't realised about the Trittico botticelliano was that it's scored for relatively modest (for Respighi) forces, unlike, say, the high-octane Roman Trilogy.  I never thought to hear any of the principal Respighi orchestral scores (the Triptych, the Trilogy, Vetrate da chiesa or Impressioni brasiliani) at an SCO concert; it was very pleasant to discover otherwise.

The Botticelli Triptych in particular is a real jewel.  More than just an impression of three extremely famous Italian Renaissance masterpieces, Respighi 'paints' in terms of his own orchestration with extraordinary precision.  In the outer movements, harp, piano, celesta and sometimes tuned metal percussion are used to put in touches of light, or to provide a greater complexity of colour, just as an artist would apply minute strokes of specific paints to achieve the desired effect, or, indeed, the way Botticelli used hints of gold leaf in Venus's hair to highlight its beautiful shade.  In the central movement, the same combination of instruments provide the exotic colour that suggests the approach of the Eastern kings.  Respighi's evocations of these paintings is so vivid and so meticulous that the least error tends to stand out, and there were a few rough corners, rhythmically speaking, in La Primavera, but the rustling sounds of nature there, the solemn, homespun roughness of the manger in the L'adorazione dei Magi, and the shimmering waves of the Nascita de Venere all came across very well.

Respighi's orchestral music has more or less occluded the rest of his output.  His operas don't get much of an outing - many suffer from awkward libretti - but he wrote a good number of songs (notably the haunting Nebbie, arguably the finest art song of any Italian composer), including three substantial works for voice and orchestra.  Il Tramonto is a setting for low voice and strings (or string quartet, I've heard it both ways) of Shelley's poem "The Sunset".  A young couple is walking at sunset in an idyllic woodland setting, and thinking of the dawn, but the man dies in the night, and the woman, though she lives on, grieves for him perpetually.  There's a little something of the atmosphere of "Verklärte Nacht" about this work, though Respighi never drifts so far away from tonality, and it's much less dramatic in character.  Nevertheless, the first half, the suggestion of darkening woods, seems to inhabit the same, quietly rhapsodic world.  Renata Pokupic sang this well, in a suitably intimate, almost conversational tone that suits the almost meandering vocal line, though she could do with standing still a little more (and perhaps not wearing a dress that's bigger than she is!).

Rossini's overtures rarely seem to have much to do with what is to follow, particularly when it comes to the "serious" operas, and especially when Rossini recycled so many of them.  They were perhaps more intended to give dilatory audience members time to settle into their seats and stop chattering. Tancredi is an opera seria, and one with a tragic ending at that, but you'd never guess it from the bright and breezy overture.  I would have like a bit more dynamic range - the famous Rossini "crescendos" all seemed to start just a little too loud, which left them with nowhere much to go - but the pace and zest were fine.  Then Ms. Pokupic returned to sing the number from the opera, "Di tanti palpati".  She has a warm, very dark mezzo voice, ideally suited to these sorts of breeches roles, but she's a little under-power at the very bottom of the range, in the middle some of the notes aren't properly centred, and waver very slightly in pitch, and for Rossini, her coloratura really isn't clean enough.  Now, the only time I've heard this opera live, the Tancredi was Marilyn Horne, back in 1981, and admittedly that's a pretty big act to follow, but once you know how it should be done, it's a little difficult to accept anything less.  This was a decent reading of the part, but the execution left quite a bit to be desired.

Some bizarre snafu had meant that the programme booklets had been printed without the note regarding tonight's final piece, which subsequently had to be incorporated in the form of a loose A5 sheet, and it was surely the piece requiring the most introduction to the audience.  The concert as a whole was presented as "A Night in Italy", and certainly the setting of Menotti's ballet score Sebastian is 17th Century Venice.  However, Menotti, though born in Italy, is quite emphatically an American composer, the sound is unmistakable.  Despite the title, the only similarity this Sebastian bears to the legend of the early Christian martyr and saint is the means of death, otherwise it's a sort of Jacobean-type drama of aristocratic family politics and black magic.  After the indifferently received premiere of the ballet in 1944, Menotti extracted a suite that nevertheless contains over half the complete score.  Like most Menotti, the music's easy enough to listen to, but I can't say it's evocative of either Venice, or the period; on the contrary, the three "outdoor" scenes in the first half of the suite really do have a very American feel to them, and even the "Barcarolle", meant to be a pas de deux for the pair of harassed lovers, has a faintly dance-hall tinge to it.

However, a more distinct, individual voice began to be heard with the slow waltz of "Sebastian's Dance", and then kicked in firmly with the very striking "Dance of the Wounded Courtesan".  I did hear faint echoes of Barber's Medea (which was completed two years later), just as I heard a flicker of what Bernstein was to do almost 15 years later in West Side Story - and the three of them all attended the Curtis Institute at the same time - and the Barber ballet score is undoubtedly the finer work, but I do think Menotti could do with a serious re-evaluation, at least over here.  Why in blue blazes is nobody outside the US (and occasionally Germany) staging The Consul?  In these days of cash-strapped opera companies, I'd think it could be an excellent choice, and it's well worth hearing.  Mazzola and the SCO certainly made as persuasive a case as they could for Sebastian.

[Next : 19th January]