Compositions
De Sabata's compositions are written in a late-romantic style with similarities to Respighi and, especially, Richard Strauss (one early commentator went so far as to call de Sabata the older composer's "adoptive son"). They were quite successful in the 1920s, being performed by conductors such as Toscanini and Walter Damrosch, but are little-known today, although Lorin Maazel has them in his repertoire. One reason may be that de Sabata did relatively little to perform and publicize his own works, preferring that his music should succeed or fail on its own merits. Critical opinion on the merits of his compositions has long been divided. For example, a 1926 Time Magazine review described his Gethsemani as "shallow, unoriginal music for which even the philanthropic genius of a Toscanini could not achieve distinction", while a critic for International Record Review, writing in the early 2000s, said that the same work "contains some of the loveliest orchestral sounds I have heard in years".
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