Italian Passion in Surround. The Munich Radio Orchestra now turns to the sensuous fascination offered by Ottorino Respighi's masterpieces - a logical and natural choice for this orchestra, which during the course of it's history of more than sixty years has developed into an ensemble with an enormously broad artistic spectrum and earned a firm place in the orchestral landscape precisely because of it's versatility. For Respighi familiarity with music history and the old masters was not only a sublime pastime but also a source of inspiration for his own compositional work, and he certainly also contributed a great deal to the now current concert practice involving the performance of early music with modern orchestras. His Antiche danze ed arie, free arrangements of arias and dances from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enables us to rediscover forgotten rhythms and tones. While he alters the character of the music by introducing a rich array of instruments, all sorts of different orchestrations, and harmonic modulations of modern coloration, the art of the old masters remains untouched. These works are finely complemented by his Gli Uccelli (The Birds) suite. In 1927 he drew on various harpsichord and lute miniatures for this quasi-ornithological "Suite for Small Orchestra," producing picturesque snapshots here showing him from his admirable and remarkable side as a sensitive observer who discovers the pictorial element in all that he sees.