My dad had this on vinyl back when I was a kid in the 1970s, and even as a child, I used to listen to this all the time. It's such a good piece for creating mental images. As I got older I could see the influence it must have had on movie soundtrack composers.
In one sense, this whole composition is in very bad taste. But on the other hand, that is just flippancy and cheap criticism because, in fact, this is one supremely gifted moment of symphonic hyperbole after another. Unbelievable melodic invention, thrillingly full and knicker-wetting orchestral writing (stunning in fact), and jaw-dropping harmonic daring. It is like the dazzling technique of Salvador Dali or Picasso, but in the sonic sphere rather than paint. Or like Hitchcock (especially Psycho or Vertigo or North by Northwest), but in music rather than film. The same absolute mastery as, ohh, Wagner in the Liebestod of Tristan und Isolde, or Stravinsky in Petruska, or Strauss in Ein Heldenleben, or Walton in Belshazzar's Feast. Or indeed Korngold in the score of the film "King's Row" - another early-to-mid 20th Century, quite parallel, rather shamelessly exhibitionist, delectably sensuous, and staggeringly gifted "Prince of Ultra-Kitsch". An intriguing genius composer, part high Viennese artist and part dedicated Hollywood craftsman, and refuge from that murderous Nazi insanity and mass psychosis, who aims (as do all great artists) straight for engagement with transcendental powers and themes that are swimming and cavorting in our collective subconsciousness. Powers epitomised by Wagner's wickedly seductive and mocking and irrepressibly energetic and vociferous Rhine maidens and Valkyrie. No surprise that they are superhuman expressions of womanly power and insight - the custodians of the core of humanity. To understand Respighi's score, one should realise that one purpose, of that flagrantly shocking aim for the subconscious, is to set up a dialogue between our ego-perspectives and the more opulent and extensive but often submerged elements of our psychical lives. Sometimes that purpose aims at enlightenment - "Oh my goddess, so we are capable of thinking and feeling and existing on those higher dimensions!" In that sense, great orchestral music is the supreme collective public project in Western art of psychoanalysis and desublimation and enlightenment, beside which Freud's couch in Swiss Cottage was a mere trifle and trinket! It is a fact, flowing from our hypothesised evolved collective social being, moulded over perhaps 250,000 years of adaptation amidst our happy sub-Saharan African tribal lives, that any person capable of sitting still in the Royal Festival Hall auditorium (especially in those expensive cantilevered box seats), hearing this work played by, perhasp, the LSO or LPO, without also wanting in every nervous impulse to spring form their seat, in tears and delight, to dance and make love with everyone nearby, is a bit anaesthetised. Maybe one too many modagons with their chilled glass of Pino Grigio in the intermission? BTW, the luxuriousness, decadence and technical brilliance of Alma-Tadema's painting "Spring" (1894) are entirely apt as an accompanying illustrating of this music. In particular, experiencing the final movement "La Befana" is to be transported on a hypersonic, ultra-erotic fast tango, of supreme madness and ecstasy, round and round the flaming orgiastic atomic furnaces of the sun, in the arms (no less) of Aphrodite and Athena! Unbelievable, and well beyond the powers of rational language to fully express, and well outside the grasp of the thin faculties of our superficial ego-perspective. In terms of throwing the audience out of the concert house auditorium, having driven these "complacent bourgeois ears, minds and hearts" insane by an enthusiasmos engendered by divinely inspire music, I drolly submit that even the Magician of Bayreuth (hardly famed for his recognition of other musicians dead or alive unless as a backhanded compliment to his consummate brilliance) would have grudgingly muttered, "I wish I had written that". Delicious and wickedly excessive! Mana from the heavens, and from the mocking goddesses of Olympus and the Nile Valley, for our hungry sensuous souls! Love, andrea
Ozawa really succeeds here in conveying the grandiosity in "Circenses" while keeping it dynamic and avoiding sounding pompous.
My dad had this on vinyl back when I was a kid in the 1970s, and even as a child, I used to listen to this all the time. It's such a good piece for creating mental images. As I got older I could see the influence it must have had on movie soundtrack composers.
FESTE ROMANE ALWAYS TAKES ME BACK TO ANCIENT ROME AS AUGUSTUS, THE FIRST EMPORER AND CAESAR OF ROME!!
Ottorino Respighi il nostro vanto italiano grandissimo. Direttore d,orchestra e orchestrali un connubio perfetto.Bravissimi
Quel élan vital ! Quelle puissance créatrice de ce compositeur italien !
spine tingling
23:19 oh my godddd
Epifania,, la mas romantica....el principio , agresivo, etc.
TY
18:44 自分用
Good times for enternaiments!
😂😂😂😂😂😂
In one sense, this whole composition is in very bad taste.
But on the other hand, that is just flippancy and cheap criticism because, in fact, this is one supremely gifted moment of symphonic hyperbole after another.
Unbelievable melodic invention, thrillingly full and knicker-wetting orchestral writing (stunning in fact), and jaw-dropping harmonic daring.
It is like the dazzling technique of Salvador Dali or Picasso, but in the sonic sphere rather than paint.
Or like Hitchcock (especially Psycho or Vertigo or North by Northwest), but in music rather than film.
The same absolute mastery as, ohh, Wagner in the Liebestod of Tristan und Isolde, or Stravinsky in Petruska, or Strauss in Ein Heldenleben, or Walton in Belshazzar's Feast.
Or indeed Korngold in the score of the film "King's Row" - another early-to-mid 20th Century, quite parallel, rather shamelessly exhibitionist, delectably sensuous, and staggeringly gifted "Prince of Ultra-Kitsch". An intriguing genius composer, part high Viennese artist and part dedicated Hollywood craftsman, and refuge from that murderous Nazi insanity and mass psychosis, who aims (as do all great artists) straight for engagement with transcendental powers and themes that are swimming and cavorting in our collective subconsciousness. Powers epitomised by Wagner's wickedly seductive and mocking and irrepressibly energetic and vociferous Rhine maidens and Valkyrie. No surprise that they are superhuman expressions of womanly power and insight - the custodians of the core of humanity.
To understand Respighi's score, one should realise that one purpose, of that flagrantly shocking aim for the subconscious, is to set up a dialogue between our ego-perspectives and the more opulent and extensive but often submerged elements of our psychical lives. Sometimes that purpose aims at enlightenment - "Oh my goddess, so we are capable of thinking and feeling and existing on those higher dimensions!"
In that sense, great orchestral music is the supreme collective public project in Western art of psychoanalysis and desublimation and enlightenment, beside which Freud's couch in Swiss Cottage was a mere trifle and trinket!
It is a fact, flowing from our hypothesised evolved collective social being, moulded over perhaps 250,000 years of adaptation amidst our happy sub-Saharan African tribal lives, that any person capable of sitting still in the Royal Festival Hall auditorium (especially in those expensive cantilevered box seats), hearing this work played by, perhasp, the LSO or LPO, without also wanting in every nervous impulse to spring form their seat, in tears and delight, to dance and make love with everyone nearby, is a bit anaesthetised. Maybe one too many modagons with their chilled glass of Pino Grigio in the intermission?
BTW, the luxuriousness, decadence and technical brilliance of Alma-Tadema's painting "Spring" (1894) are entirely apt as an accompanying illustrating of this music.
In particular, experiencing the final movement "La Befana" is to be transported on a hypersonic, ultra-erotic fast tango, of supreme madness and ecstasy, round and round the flaming orgiastic atomic furnaces of the sun, in the arms (no less) of Aphrodite and Athena!
Unbelievable, and well beyond the powers of rational language to fully express, and well outside the grasp of the thin faculties of our superficial ego-perspective.
In terms of throwing the audience out of the concert house auditorium, having driven these "complacent bourgeois ears, minds and hearts" insane by an enthusiasmos engendered by divinely inspire music, I drolly submit that even the Magician of Bayreuth (hardly famed for his recognition of other musicians dead or alive unless as a backhanded compliment to his consummate brilliance) would have grudgingly muttered, "I wish I had written that".
Delicious and wickedly excessive!
Mana from the heavens, and from the mocking goddesses of Olympus and the Nile Valley, for our hungry sensuous souls!
Love, andrea
Well said. Should say this to those who swear by Rott's sophomoric symphony.
@@tt-ew7rx Nice to have ones aesthetic judgment given some kudos, for once.
Thanks, andrea