Respighi Fontane di Roma a. Pini di Roma a. Antiche danze ed arie per liuto – Suite No. 3 a.

Boccherini String Quintet in C, “La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid”, G324 b.

Albinoni (arr. Giazotto) Adagio in G minor b. Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Herbert von Karajan.

DG The Originals (Mid  price) (CD) 449 724-2GOR (80 minutes: ADD). Items marked a from 2531 055 (11/78), b 2530 247 (recorded 1969).

I was rapped over the knuckles once for finding two Karajans in a single recording, one a breathtaking master of orchestral subtlety, the other a gross vulgarian. Well, I find them again here, though there is a shading between the two. Respighi’s Roman pictures are brilliantly virtuoso but also delicately poetic and ravishingly coloured: quite magnificent, despite the prosaic little bird that unaccountably replaces the nightingale in “Pines of the Janiculum”. The Ancient Airs are good, though here the strings-only scoring leads to some showing-off of the Berlin string sound for its own sake. Boccherini’s Quintet is overstated and very glum in this inflated form, while the ‘Albinoni’ Adagio, hugely distended and protracted to an unbelievable ten minutes’ duration, is either quite revolting or bizarrely funny, according to temperament. The recordings still sound very well.
MEO