A new recording of Songs by Ottorino Respighi featuring acclaimed American tenor Timothy Fallon with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz is now available on BIS Records (BIS-2632 SAC).  

The album, which is a co-production with BR-Klassik recorded at the Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich, includes 27 songs spanning three decades of the composer’s career including three complete song cycles as well as a selection of individual songs. While Respighi is best known for his orchestral works, these hidden gems are an important contribution to his body of work that are often overlooked.

From L’ultima ebbrezza, composed when Respighi (1879—1936) was 17 years old, to Quattro arie scozzesi (the Four Scottish Songs) from 1924, the songs attest to the variety of Respighi’s musical interests, influences and styles, and are at turns lyrically operatic, expressionist, impressionist or symbolist. The title track, Crepuscolo is the final song in Ottorino Respighi’s Deità Silvane ("Woodland Deities"), a song cycle of 5 poems by Antonio Rubino that opens the album. Crepuscolo was selected as the album title, according to the program notes, as it also stands for the twilight during the interwar years of everything that Respighi represented, as various trends such as atonality, spiky neoclassicism and futurism flourished. Respighi’s love of the Renaissance is manifest in the Cinque canti all’antica, settings of poets including Boccaccio. The recording is rounded out with some of Respighi’s most popular songs such as Nebbie, Stornellatrice, as well as lesser well-known works.

This is Fallon’s second BIS Records release with his longtime recital partner, pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. Gramophone called their debut recording, LISZT 15 Songs “superb” hailing Fallon’s voice as “exceptional, darkish in tone, evenly produced, capable of both ringing high notes and a superbly controlled mezza voce.” The New York Times praised Fallon as possessing an "elegant sense of phrasing and luminous tone with his sure-handed control of timbre, from velvety pianissimos to bright confident high notes."

Fallon first came to international attention when he won the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition in 2013. Devoting time to both operatic and concert stages around the world, he has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Swedish Radio Orchestra, and acclaimed conductors including Helmut Rilling, Herbert Blomstedt, Marin Alsop and Masaaki Suzuki. He has held leading roles with the Dutch National Opera, Oper Leipzig, and beginning in the 2022–23 season, will be the house lyric tenor at the Vienna Volksoper in Austria. Fallon is a featured soloist on the 2021 GRAMMY Award-winning recording, Richard Danielpour: The Passion of Yeshua, with the Buffalo Philharmonic led by JoAnn Falletta. Mentored among others by the mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, Timothy Fallon is a graduate of the Westminster Choir College (Princeton, New Jersey) and The Juilliard School. 

A citizen of the USA, Israel and South Africa, Ammiel Bushakevitz specializes as a Lieder pianist. His awards include the European Union Commission Award, the DAAD International Scholarship for Artists, the Prix de la Ville de Lausanne and the city of Leipzig's Richard Wagner Award. Upcoming performances include recitals in London’s Wigmore Hall, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, the Shanghai Concert Hall, Salle Pleyel in Paris and New York’s Carnegie Hall. Bushakevitz has appeared at the festivals of Salzburg, Bayreuth, Lucerne, the Pablo Casals Festival in Barcelona and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, to name a few. One of the last private students of the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Ammiel is an alumnus of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). 

Visit www.timothyfallon.com and www.bushakevitz.com 

for more information

For media only, not for public distribution, 

[Click here] for link to audio files



[Click here] for recording booklet including timings,

song text, program notes, bios and more

For interview requests, more information, or review/airplay copies please contact Genevieve Spielberg at 908-608-1325 or genevieve@gsiartists.com

Additional Recordings by Timothy Fallon: