Respighi ’Epiphany’ - Roman Festivals (Part 4) - Petrenko conducts

The finale of “Roman Festivals“ finds Respighi at his most roof-raising, with an enormous percussion-laden orchestra, bells, piano, extra brass, organ and all. Indeed, after he’d completed this work he said he felt he could achieve nothing further with such mammoth forces. The music depicts the night before Epiphany in the Piazza Navona: “A characteristic rhythm of trumpets dominates the frantic clamour. Above the swelling noise float, from time to time, rustic themes, saltarello cadenzas, the strains of a barrel-organ in a side-show, the appeals of an auctioneer, the raucous song of the intoxicated and the lively stornello in which is expressed the popular feeling: ’We are Romans, let us pass!’“ Vasily Petrenko conducts the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the 2009 Proms in what was its first performance at those celebrated annual summer concerts. NOTE: This performance has also been uploaded here in its complete form, as per this link ...