Crepuscolo is the final song of Ottorino Respighi's song cycle Deità silvane ('forest deities'), but as an album title it also stands for the twilight during the interwar years of everything Respighi represented, as different trends such as atonality, spiky neoclassicism and futurism flourished. In response to these developments, Respighi in 1932 signed the famous manifest calling for music with 'human content' - something that his songs certainly live up to: as Elsa Respighi, the composer's wife, once said it was to his songs that he entrusted the hidden secrets of his heart, when he let his soul sing freely.
From L'ultima ebbrezza - composed when Respighi was only 17 years old - to the Four Scottish Songs of 1924, the songs recorded here testify to the diversity of his musical interests, influences and styles, and are in turn lyrical operatic, expressionistic, impressionistic or symbolistic. Respighi's love of the Renaissance is also manifest in the Cinque canti all'antica, settings of poets including Boccaccio. Timothy Fallon and Ammiel Bushakevitz have previously released a Liszt recital described as 'excellent' in Gramophone. They have now conceived a varied programme that takes on three complete groups as well as a selection of individual songs, including Respighi's most popular songs (Nebbie, Stornellatrice) as well as lesser-known ones.
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