What to make of this? Overtura Respighiana begins like The Pines of Rome without the tunes, and then continues with some references to La boutique fantasque, culminating in a Rossini crescendo in the form of a tarantella. Intended as an homage, it veers dangerously close to parody, the tinkly percussion and cute dabs of orchestral color frankly overdone. The two Sinfonias, as the titles suggest, are more serious, even gloomy, but it’s generally attractive gloom. The idiom is sort of like Hindemith (think Nobilissima Visione) with little concern for form and no counterpoint.
Sinfonia 1, for strings, has beautiful moments and shows that Salvatore Di Vittorio knows how to score for limited forces (in Sinfonia 2 the glockenspiel becomes a deadly weapon). But despite the allegedly multi-movement structure of both works, there’s scant contrast. The music is consistently slow and lyrical, though happily brief. The Ave Maria is a hideous seven minutes of chromatic wailing whose distant recorded balance renders the words largely unintelligible. It winds up sounding like bad Ligeti. The consistently high writing for some unacceptably tremulous female voices fatigues the ear, and the piece stops half a dozen times before it finally ends. The Clarinet Sonata (that is, for solo clarinet), is completely forgettable. You keep waiting for some other instrument to chime in and relieve the monotony, but it never happens.
Aside from the choir, the performances, under the composer’s direction, seem very good. No complaints either about Benjamin Baron’s sensitively shaded clarinet playing. The problem is the music itself: its amateurishness, pretension, and inattention to questions of form and variety. It is only interesting to the extent that it sounds like someone else. I’m not questioning Di Vittorio’s sincerity or his enthusiasm, but the best will in the world won’t make this good music.
