When it comes to a meeting of the musical and the culinary, those listeners with a grasp of opera history will think of Gioacchino Rossini. As a talented, prolific and successful opera composer, he gave up music at the age of 36 to spend much of his time exploring the art of cooking. The overture to The Barber of Seville, one of his best known works, is a procession of his musical arsenal that showcases Italian temperament and wit in equal measure. It could be said that Ottorino Respighi was in love with the Italian capital. His first great success came through the orchestral piece Fountains of Rome, which was followed by two further works on a Roman theme, Pines of Rome and Roman Festivals. The middle work of this Roman trilogy explores the various districts of the city through the following movements: I. The Pines of Villa Borghese; II. Pines near a catacomb. III. The Pines of Janiculum. IV. The Pines of the Appian Way. The piece to close the concert is a genuine hit, and one of the best known pieces of music from the European – and primarily Italian – genre of Wild West films known as the Spaghetti Westerns (yet another culinary reference). The audience will no doubt be familiar with extracts from the soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West by Ennio Morricone, the uncrowned king of music for the silver screen.

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