Symphonic Poems: CD

Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna in 1879 and studied the violin and viola at the Liceo Musicale there from 1891 with Federico Sarti. At the same time he took lessons in composition, at first from the musicologist Luigi Torchi, who had returned to Bologna from the Liceo Rossini in Pesaro in the same year, and later from the composer Giuseppe Martucci, who was director of the Liceo until 1902. In 1899 he completed his studies and the following year went to St. Petersburg as principal viola-player at the Imperial opera. In Russia, where he spent the seasons of 1901-1902 and 1903-1904, he took lessons in composition and orchestration from Rimsky-Korsakov. During the first decade of the century Respighi won a reputation as a performer, while pursuing his growing interest in earlier music and in composition. In Berlin in 1908 and 1909 he attended lectures by Max Bruch, but to relatively little effect. The influence of Rimsky-Korsakov, however, remained with him, guiding his bold use of orchestral color in the music he wrote. These years brought a series of compositions. In 1902 a piano concerto of his was performed in Bologna and his Notturno of 1905 was played in New York under Rodolfo Ferrari. In the same year his opera Ré Enzo was staged in Bologna, to be followed five years later by Semirama, these operas proving successful enough to bring about his appointment in 1913 as a teacher of composition at the Liceo Santa Cecilia in Rome