(Led by LAURANCE TURNER )
Conducted by WARWICK BRAITHWAITE
NIKA MONASTRI (soprano)
We know Ottorino Respighi, a composer of high repute in Italy, by his original orchestral works, The Fountains of Rome and The Pines of Rome, but more particularly by his arrangement of several Rossini pieces under the title of La Boutique Fantasque. In this comparatively new suite, The Birds, the composer has made another group of arrangements from amongst the works of certain seventeenth century composers who have none of the modern reluctance to call a bird a bird. Here, then, is real bird music-the birds actually sing. The plan of the suite is as follows :
No. i. is a short prelude by Pasquini framing a little shop-window display of the other numbers in the suite ; No. 2 paints an expressive little picture with a dove-cot in the middle distance -the cooing of the doves on flutes and clarinets is unmistakable; No. 3 is Rameau's famous imitation of the hen i who has clearly laid an egg and is very cock-a-woop about it; in No. 4 an ' anonymous English' nightingale sings very sweetly; and No. 5' is Pasquini's Cuckoo, also famous, in which the insistent bird sings longer than any of , the others. All this pretty chirping is brought to an end with a repetition of ] Pasquini's Prelude.