4 Liriche

Contrasto (1906)

Nebbie (1906)

Notte (1905–12)

Povero Cor (1909)

Like Strauss, Respighi was married to a highly accomplished soprano, who inspired and took part in the first performances of many of his works. Some of his best songs, however, like the first two in this programme, date from as long as 13 years before his association with Elsa Sangiacomo began – at a time, that is, when the Italian vocal repertoire was overwhelmingly dominated by opera and the only song composers who found popular favour were Francesco Paolo Tosti and his even paler imitators.

In the absence of an Italian tradition equivalent to that of the Lied or the mélodie, Respighi himself did not escape the drawing-room influence in the songs he was working on in the 1890s. By 1906, however, when he wrote not only Contrasto and Nebbie but also several other successful songs, he had developed a style of his own, not least by reference to contemporary French models. The caressing melodic line and fluid piano textures of Contrasto, to a symbolist text by Puccini’s librettist Carlo Zangarini, is a persuasive example of that. It is difficult, on the other hand, to think of anything in the French repertoire as stark as Respighi’s setting of Ada Negri’s Nebbie which has retained its status as a favourite among his songs not by charm, obviously, but by its uncompromising emotional intensity.

Another Negri setting, Notte (originally written as a duet in 1905 and first published as a solo song in 1909) is closer in its lyrical manner to Contrasto except for one searing outcry which reveals a state of mind almost as unhappy as that of Nebbie. Povero cor, from the Sei melodie of 1909, confirms Respighi’s overwhelming authority in the expression of suicidal despair while retaining his characteristic stylistic integrity and his refreshing rejection of cliché.