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Reviews & Raves

The orchestra saved the best for last – a stunning performance of Ottorino Respighi's 1924 masterpiece of orchestral color, the "Pines of Rome." It would be hard to fault any of it, including the recording of the nightingale in the "Pines of the Janiculum," which was the most surreal I have ever heard. The march of the Roman legions that concludes the images begins with a ghostly remembrance that gradually emerges into a menacing reality, perhaps the ascendance of fascism. This is the kind of music that can achieve its full effect only in live performance. Respighi wanted the ground to tremble under marching feet, and on Sunday it did.