Though not strictly born in the 1880s (1879), Respighi belonged to a group of composers known as the generazione dell’ottanta (The 80s Generation), who strived to assert, as they saw it, a renewed musical expression of authentically Italian musical culture. It was a conservative stance in terms of both musical approach and nationalism, but it resulted in Respighi and colleagues recovering unjustly neglected treasures from their Italian heritage. Respighi’s first international success, an arrangement of Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna, may be seen as the natural forerunner to the four suites of arrangements and transcriptions on this album.

While the intent may have been conservative, Respighi’s approach to what we now call ‘early music’ was notably liberal by our standards, marked as much by nostalgia and irony as erudition. Orchestration is much too weak a term to do justice to the process of subtle recomposition to which Respighi subjected his chosen originals.