Meditation Meets Jubilation at Charlotte Symphony’s Duruflé-Respighi Concert

November 17, 2025

Lawrence Toppman

By Lawrence Toppman

The Decca label used to advertise records that offered an ffrr experience: full frequence range recording, able to reproduce anything from a ripple on the musical water to the roaring of a glacier calving tons of ice. I thought of that Saturday in Belk Theater, as I listened to a concert that began with ancient Roman Catholic spirituality and ended with antique Roman splendor.

Guest conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong, a rarity these days who spoke not a single word from the podium, carried the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra through the subtleties of Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem and the sweep of Ottorino Respighi’s “Fountains of Rome” and “Pines of Rome,” the better-known portions of his “Roman Trilogy.” (CSO music director Kwamé Ryan conducted the other segment, “Roman Festivals,” last March.)

Both halves of the concert let him bring the orchestra down to a faint rumble and then up to a roof-raising eruption. I’d never heard the four-movement Respighi suites played as continuous pieces of music – I presume Lecce-Chong did that to forestall applause between movements – but that decision let us have an uninterrupted hearing of Respighi’s scoring, from actual birdcalls to the thunder of extra brass placed in the mezzanine boxes.

Duruflé’s Requiem, written mostly during World War II but premiered afterward, stands alone in a crowded field. Not for him the terror inspired by Verdi, the balance of despair and peace in Mozart, the reassurance of Brahms, the celestial elevation of Fauré, the angry recriminations of Britten. He aims for serenity, and despite a couple of loud outpourings of joy (as in the Sanctus), he maintains a meditative mood almost all the way through.

My favorite movement among 20^th-century requiems that use the conventional text – John Rutter’s, Karl Jenkins’, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s – always seems to be the Pie Jesu, a prayer to Jesus to give us eternal rest. So it was here, with principal cellist Jon Lewis gently underpinning mezzo-soprano Megan Samarin. Duruflé wrote only short solo parts for her and baritone Eleomar Cuello, so the Charlotte Master Chorale provided most of the beautiful singing. (The composer may not have heard his Requiem with 100 voices, but I’m not complaining.)

Respighi’s two suites depict famous fountains around the Eternal City and stands of trees along an old Roman road, on a hill, in a garden and by a burial ground. Except for the imitation of water in “Fountains” – which made me wish more than ever I had enough money to endow the CSO with a dozen more string chairs – we’re not meant to take the musically descriptive passages too literally.

The ffrr effect came most into play in “Pines.” Immediately after the loud, boisterous play of children in “Pines of the Villa Borghese,” the softest somber notes of cellos and double basses led us into “Pines Near a Catacomb.” After the delicacy of “Pines of the Janiculum,” set on a hill dedicated to the two-faced god Janus – he looks into the past and into the future – we heard the stomping ghosts of Roman legions in “Pines of the Appian Way.”

Respighi died in 1936, too soon to see Benito Mussolini’s alignment with Adolf Hitler or hear the sound of German jackboots marching through his native land. So it’s possible to appreciate his unironic tributes to the lost greatness of the Roman Empire without wincing at the terrible things that came after his time.