[WHICH IS THIS, A REVIEW OF A PERFORMANCE OF THE FOUR SEASONS OR is it about Respighi's Pines of Rome?] As I prepared for my time on the air recently, I was casually surfing the web for some interesting little tidbit or new angle on some favorite pieces of music. Let's face it, finding something new in such familiar sounds can be difficult. How many of us can remember anything that happened during our morning commute unless it's out of the ordinary? If someone cuts us off, we sit in a traffic jam, or some poor duffer shanks a tee shot through your windshield, that we remember. The same thing applies with music. It fills our office at work, our car during errands, comes out of our computer while we surf the web, but it's easy to just let it flow past our conscious mind while we focus on other things. Once in a while, however, something happens that forever alters our perception of a piece. Here's an example...During ProMusica Chamber Orchestra's Holiday Concert last December, Assistant Concert Master Marjorie Bagley stepped to the front of the Southern Theatre stage to play the Winter portion of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. This, however, was not just a rote recitation of familiar music, but an explosion of sound which washed over the audience. John Petric, a reviewer for The Other Paper, dubbed Marjorie Bagley a"shredder" for the ferocity with which she brought Vivaldi's music to life. I now must measure other performances by hers. Not only that, but the music now immediately transports me back to that moment, forever changing how I view at least THAT season. The way I listen to Respighi's Pines of Rome went through a similar change, not because of what I heard, but HOW I heard it. My web search took me to a site called http://www.romeartlover.it/respighi.html where I found beautiful photographs of the Rome Respighi wrote about in his orchestral trilogy. Now the Pines of the Villa Borghese were right in front of me as I listened, trees that are much different than the pines in our yard, or the ones we haul home for Christmas. The Pines of the Janiculum do not enclose you, but are open, providing shade as well as beauty, while seeming to frame the panorama before you. While we hear daily reports on how the web is sucking up all of our free time and turning our minds to mush, take a moment to revel in the beauty it can put at your fingertips and the new dimension it can bring to your enjoyment of music. Here's Antonio Pappano, a British-born conductor of Italian descent, giving his take on Respighi's Roman Trilogy. -- Boyce Lancaster [youtube lmtscDpnWLU]
Respighi's Rome
