Respighi- Feste Romane Trombone solo

Full disclosure, this is a new excerpt for me. I have never had the privilege performing this piece and never thought to practice it until stumbling on a recording of the Pittsburgh Symphony under Maazel.

As always, my first step in learning something new is listening to every recording I can find of the piece. Not necessarily trying to decide on what I will take from each recording, but simply saturating myself in the sound of the composition.

After getting deep into the listening, it’s time to start playing! The first thing to note is the time and key signatures! D major and alternating 9/8 and 6/8 after the initial 3/4 bar. I practice this slowly with the metronome on eighth notes (with no accent) Trying to line up the glisses on the appropriate beginning and ending beats.

Speaking of glisses, follow your trombone instinct and crescendo BEASTLY through them to the downbeats. You are fortunate here that the end of every gliss is on a downbeat, so worst case scenario, watch the conductor!

The traps are in the third bar (5th eighth note entrance) and sixth bar (6th eighth note entrance) of rehearsal 37. These syncopated rhythms attached to a gliss lend themselves nicely to be late on the entrances and behind on the following downbeat. So again, keep the metronome on the eighth note without accent to help line everything up correctly.

The end isn’t too complicated, just be ready for the triplet change into the duplet rhythm. For the final note, don’t try to crescendo into the low D from the current dynamic, instead, I do a sforzando, then a light crescendo arriving at the original dynamic by the time I land on the low D. Lower notes tend to have more buzz on the sound and will appear louder, so no need to try and force the note out and air balling it.