Ottorino Respighi

Respighi received a cosmopolitan training, studying not only at the Liceo Musicale in his native Bologna, but also in Berlin, where he worked with Max Bruch, and in St. Petersburg, where Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov lavished his advice on him. Courses in counterpoint and fugue followed those on the violin and viola, two instruments that he played sufficiently well to appear not only in the Imperial Opera Orchestra in St. Petersburg in 1900 but also with the Mugellini String Quartet from 1903 to 1908. From 1913 he taught at the Liceo di Santa Cecilia in Rome, becoming its director in 1924, but resigning two years later to concentrate on composition. His works, which reflect the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy and Richard Strauss, include chamber music and several operas. Bit it is for his orchestral works – and principally his symphonic poems The Fountains of Rome (1916), The Pines of Rome (1924) and Roman Festivals (1928) – that Respighi is best remembered as one of the leading Italina composers of the 20th century. His style is firmly rooted in the post–Romantic tradition, but with recourse to local colour and to more archaic elements in the form of Gregorian motifs drawn from Italy's past.