Another Naxos Discovery - Orchestral music by Ildebrando Pizzetti

Naxos, the budget label that is apparently attempting to record all the concert music ever written, has released a marvelous disc of orchestral music by Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968), an Italian composer whose works have been overshadowed by the more popular Ottorino Respighi, but who certainly deserves a sympathetic listening, judging by this program excellently played by the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra (Greece) and its artistic director, Myron Michailidis. 

Two of the works on the recording are billed as world premiere recordings: A suite of three pieces for orchestra from incidental music to Greek dramas, grouped under the name The Feat of the Panathenaea, and the Prelude to Pizzetti's opera Clytemnestra.  Works available in alternative recordings are Concerto dell'estate, and the three Preludes for Sophocle's tragedy Oedipus the King.  All of this music sounds very much like Respighi, with the same rich, warm orchestral sound, and the same practice of building to huge climaxes pulling in the full weight of a large romantic orchestra.  The recording sounds excellent to me, and the music is enchanting, if not so memorable in terms of the themes and their working out as Respighi's Roman Trilogy.   But anybody searching for some splendid-sounding romantic music in gorgeous performances can't go wrong with this budget Naxos release.  I applaud their initiative in seeking out unusual repertory and finding good, underrecorded groups to perform it.