Pines of Rome

One of three musical postcards from Rome, Respighi’s Pines of Rome enchants with visions of children playing in the shadow of a villa, mournful shadowed scenes near a catacomb, a moonlit night on a tree-lined distant hill overlooking the city, and finally, a ghostly glimpse of bygone triumphs, with trumpet-heralded ancient Roman soldiers marching toward the Sacred Way and the Capitol.

Composer, author, linguist, raconteur, and inimitably stylish Camille Saint-Saëns was a bon vivant who made composing and performing look effortless while creating some of the most devilishly difficult works to play—works that bring out the best in the soloist. Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto begins with a bold, dramatic theme, subsides to a serene grace, and roars with a bristling, buoyant finale. Like Saint-Saëns, Gil Shaham, “a virtuoso and a player of deeply intense sincerity” (The New York Times), makes it look like child’s play.

Two evocative works add to the excitement of this program: Scottish composer Anna Meredith’s stomp along a beach thrills like the sharp air off a cold sea, and Sibelius’s shimmering symphonic fantasy conjures up images of an iron-willed princess who demands that her lover pass tests of strength and magic.