Answer No. 4

The special instrument heard in the latter half of the excerpt is the song of a nightingale. Yes it's a bird. When Ottorino Respighi wrote The Pines of Rome in 1923, he asked for a phonograph recording of a nigtingale to be played at the conclusion of the third movement, the Pines of the Gianicolo. Nowadays, the publishing company provides you with a tape of the bird. Of course, you can come up with your own sounds if you like.

Toscanini didn't like the sound of a real bird. He chose a mechanical device which merely sang its brief song over and over again. This recording is the Berlin Philharmonic, von Karajan conducting. Deutsche Grammophon 413 822. Whatever bird he enlisted for this rendition is as great as Pavarotti.

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