Sometimes music is most moving when it evokes the past. Familiar works that engage listeners in emotional time-travel include Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” and much of the ...

Fascism, according to a 1932 Italian encyclopedia, is “the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many ...

“Orchestral Blockbuster.” “Stereo Spectacular.” Such were the words used, in the heyday of hi-fi, to push records of the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s so-called “Roman Trilogy” of tone poems: ...

Composed over the course of 12 tumultuous years – from Italy’s disastrous participation in the First World War (1915-6) to the consolidation of Mussolini’s regime (1928) - the Roman Trilogy shows the ...

The playwright Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946) wafts like a ghost through the annals of early-twentieth-century opera. Alban Berg thought seriously of making an adaptation of Hauptmann’s play “And Pippa ...

Thursday night’s Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert was something of a travelogue — and a set of orchestral showpieces — except when it wasn’t. With music director Fabio Luisi conducting, the exception ...

Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

As music director of the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the London-born Antonio Pappano seems to be working hard to establish his Italian credentials. He follows a distinguished line of fellow countrymen ...

In this series, Donald Macleod explores Ottorino Respighi’s life and music from different perspectives, including his associations with Bologna, Rome and the USA; the important presence of his wife, ...

Ottorino Respighi was a big fan of the music that came a few centuries before him, and he often re-tooled the old formulas to fit his music. Jesus Lopez Cobos leads the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra in ...

Pianist Bruce Liu acknowledged applause after performing with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, led by music director Fabio Luisi (also applauding, at left), at the Meyerson Symphony Center on Oct. 9.