Respighi concerto

[mikey6]

I love the mixolydian mode concerto but what is this review all about?

"I find it very hard to like the much later Mixolydian Concerto nearly as much. It is almost twice as long, for a start, and although the material is more Respighian, in its gestures at modality and 'early music', it is spread dismally thin. The enormous opening cadenza, combining a dark Lisztian bravura with echoes of Gregorian chant, prepares one for the sheer scale of the opening movement (it plays for 19 minutes), but not for its interminable monotony. The main theme is simply not strong enough to bear such endless, moody doodling, and it is all too easily reduceable to a five-note turn which Respighi returns to endlessly. The 'slow movement' (heavens, wasn't that 19-minute moderato slow enough?) has more variety, but the pianistic configuration that punctuates appearances of a solemn, slightly Vaughan Williams-ish tune too often declines into mere runs of sequences. The finale, said to be a passacaglia, is no less infested with industriously self-regenerating pianistic twiddle; a sort of brisk toccata arrives eventually, but neither that nor the disconcerting apparition of a half-bar quotation from (surely?) Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue can save the movement from being both full of notes and empty of significant invention. I have more than a slight weakness for Respighi, but this is by several lengths the dullest work of his that I have ever heard. Not even Tozer's skill, not even Downes's way with unfashionable late romantics can bring such a still-born piece to life. Life, though, the earlier concerto has in rude abundance, and on its account the admirer of Respighi, though chastened by the realization that even in his maturity he could write a real stinker once in a while, will be grateful. The excellent recording can't disguise the fact the Respighi the master-orchestrator could also commit the occasional page of coarsely over-inflated bombast.'"