A wave of colours, beauty and grandeur, swept away the drops of perplexity, dissent and groans, which fell in no particular order at the Teatro Augusteo on the evening of the premiere of the symphonic poem in four paintings “Pines of Rome” by Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936). It was December 14, 1924. A century ago. The evening ended in a triumph, equal to that of the Roman legion on the march described in the last pages of an iridescent score, which indicated the Bolognese composer as the spearhead of the so-called Generation of the Eighties which, for the period of birth at the end of ‘Nineteenth century, he shared it with Franco Alfano, Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero and Ildebrando Pizzetti. The hopes of Italian symphonism were pinned on them, now completely marginal compared to the operatic production that had conquered the world and was absolutely preponderant. The «Pines of Rome» enter Respighi’s catalog halfway through the trilogy that gave him fame: the «Fountains» are in fact from 1916, the «Festivals» from 1928, but there are very few doubts about the value and diffusion of the poem entrusted to baton by Bernardino Molinari and welcomed after the first notes with some disturbing reservations.
The rebirth of Italian symphonism on the overflowing success of melodrama
But it didn’t take much to turn towards success, which has always graced the poem ever since. Respighi goes far beyond a redundant orchestra, the chiseling of the detail, the obsessive attention to the sound mixes between the instrumental departments that derived from the extraordinary school of Nikolaj Rimskij-Korsakov who had shaped the young Igor Stravinsky, himself an author in the three-year period 1910 -1913 of a Russian triptych in the ballet field that makes your wrists tremble due to its revolutionary scope: «L’oiseau de feu», «Pétrouchka» and «Le sacre di printemps». The Bolognese author had many other stylistic problems, surrounded by the solid and overwhelming superstructure of melodrama that dictated the law in Italy and abroad. A contemporary of Giacomo Puccini, he had in common with the composer from Lucca only the ability to use unusual colors and forcing the tonal system already shattered with Claude Debussy, Stravinsky himself, and above all Arnold Schoenberg, father of twelve-tone seriality. But it was the language that was totally different: Puccini needed words and stage action, Respighi relied on the ethereal plot of the symphonic poem, also called program music.
The Bolognese of the Russian school who wrote the charm of Caput Mundi in the score
Rome, the eternal city that had belonged to the Roman Republic, then to the emperors, then to the Pope-King and finally to the Savoys and to the journalist from Predappio who had marched his black shirts there in 1922, had provided him with reasons for inspiration with the its views, its characteristics, its colors, its popular atmospheres. If «Fontane di Roma» was the work of expressive maturity, «Pini di Roma» was the graduation. The pine trees, in reality, are both a recurring element and an excuse to describe some postcards of the city in the score. Respighi spreads the lights and reflections over the course of a day. The poem opens in the park of Villa Borghese, in the morning, where the garrulous voices of the children counterpoint the games of the carefree years. The composer immediately explicitly quotes the nursery rhyme «Madama Dorè» to immerse you in the lively and enthralling atmosphere. Everything is joy of life, carefreeness, racing and the speed of childhood games. Suddenly the painting evaporates, and takes on shadows and echoes of the “Pines near a catacomb”. An ancient song slides among the trees that are witnesses of the ancient past, a initially timid psalmody grows and asserts itself, the sorrowful song of the first Christians becomes a hymn of full-blown faith and pride, and then turns towards the twilight and nocturnal hues of the Janiculum. If Giuseppe Verdi had resorted to anvils as a striking “object trouvé” in «Trovatore», Respighi goes much further and relies on a record, where the song of the nightingale is reproduced, and the beauty of nature combines with the mastery of art of sounds.
The legion marching towards triumph and the favor of Toscanini
Then, in a misty and milky dawn, you hear a tune that comes from afar and allows you to imagine what you still can’t see. The «Pines of the Appian Way» frame the arrival of a victorious Roman legion, marching towards the City to celebrate the triumph. The motif, modal to suggest the leap into the past, is cadenced and grows by superposition, as in a Doppler effect which however stops at the culminating point of the approach, without the distortion of the separation. Rome welcomes its victorious army which brought to the tip of its spears the eagle, law, language and a system which has indelibly marked Western civilisation. In the post-war period, a whole series of drawn-out analogies in reference to the twentieth century caused Respighi, who had never joined the Fascist Party, and therefore his work, to be viewed with unjustified suspicion. Which have survived both ideologies and the most stupid ideological forcing and distortions. And also to the allegations that have not managed to dirty or marginalize «Pini di Roma», one of the true orchestral masterpieces of Italian music, certainly grandiloquent (six whelks, an ancient Roman military instrument for issuing orders, for the fourth scene alone, often replaced by trumpets and flugelhorns) as certainly faithful to a happy and multifaceted inspirational vein to the point of exaggeration. Arturo Toscanini, not suspect of fascist sympathies after the weakness of the failed candidacy of 1919 and not even before the “Bologna slap” of 1931 which pushed him into exile in the United States, directed «Pini di Roma» on 14 January 1926 in his first concert at the helm of the NBC Orchestra that had been formed, with an impressive economic effort that only the Americans could afford, precisely for him, providing him with an authentic machine from artistic warfare impeccable in every department. In 1945, when he directed the New York ensemble for the last time, Toscanini wanted Respighi’s masterpiece on the program.