SEASON FINALE WITH MTT: BERLIOZ AND SIBELIUS | New World Symphony SEASON FINALE WITH MTT: BERLIOZ AND SIBELIUS SEASON FINALE WITH MTT: BERLIOZ AND SIBELIUS New World Center Saturday, May 7 at 8:00 PM Sunday, May 8 at 2:00 PM Artists Relish in the last glimpse of this season’s Fellows alongside MTT, who together join acclaimed violist Roberto Díaz, for Berlioz’ part-symphony, part- concerto Harold in Italy. Based on Lord Byron’s Childe Harold, each movement offers a snapshot of his Italian adventures through wandering chromaticism, lilting melodies and a weighty dirge that represents the trudging of pilgrims. Sibelius likened his Sixth Symphony to a “wild romp,” but instead offers a tranquil refuge of serene sound that builds to a sacred finale. His sweeping one-movement Seventh Symphony hints at 16th-century Palestrina—a bright light in this formidable finale to an epic season.

**The Saturday, May 7 performance will be presented as a WALLCAST™ concert, presented by Citi®, in SoundScape Park.** Tickets no longer available online. Program Symphony No. 6 in D minor, Op. 104 (1923) Allegro molto moderato Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105 (1924) Hector Berlioz Harold in Italy, Op. 16 (1834) Harold in the Mountains. Scenes of Melancholy, Happiness and Joy March of the Pilgrims Singing the Evening Prayer Serenade of an Abruzzi Mountain-Dweller to his Mistress Orgy of the Brigands: Memories of Scenes Past Mr. Díaz Symphony No. 6 in D minor, Op. 104 (1923) Approximate duration: 27 minutes The early symphonies of Jean Sibelius expressed the fervor of a young man fighting for recognition for his country and a place for his own voice on the international stage. Starting with the Third Symphony , Sibelius shifted toward a pure and refined orchestral sound, infusing the elegance of Mozart and Haydn into an incisive, modern language.

Even through the dark years of a cancer scare and the devastation of World War I, Sibelius wrote honest, uncompromising music that encapsulated life’s joys and struggles in abstract forms. In his final symphonies, Sibelius defied the cynicism of the war-torn era. His sound became even more transparent and rarified, as guileless as the snow that blanketed his isolated country estate in Finland. Material that Sibelius drafted during the difficult gestation of his Symphony No. 5 in 1914-15 ended up shaping both the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, composed in 1923 and 1924, respectively. He also redirected themes into the Sixth Symphony that had been meant for a project he considered in 1920, a tone poem based on a Finnish moon goddess. When he crafted the Seventh Symphony in one continuous movement, it was an obvious and radical departure from traditional symphonic structure, but even the Sixth Symphony, with its four movements, abandoned expected conventions and moved closer to the evocative, freeform genre of the orchestral tone poem. A contemporary critic noted the reserved demeanor of the Sixth Symphony, especially in comparison to its predecessor.

Writing after the 1923 premiere in Helsinki, he wrote, “The Sixth Symphony is more delicate, smaller in scale and gentler. The Fifth is an exuberant jubilee, the Sixth is pure idyll.” Sibelius himself characterized the Sixth Symphony as “pure spring water,” differentiating it from the more inebriating indulgences of the early 1920s being composed by the likes of Arnold Schoenberg or Richard Strauss. Unfortunately, Sibelius’ own intake in those years was far from “pure spring water.” Perhaps his most notorious disgrace related to his long pattern of heavy drinking occurred in 1923, when he was on a conducting tour with the Sixth Symphony and other works. In Gothenburg, Sweden, he was found drunk in a restaurant before the concert and was whisked onto the podium just in time. Thinking he was at a rehearsal, he stopped the orchestra midstream shortly after the concert began. “Everything was chaos in my ears,” his wife later confessed. “I was in a state of mortal terror.” That personal turmoil is nowhere evident in the Sixth Symphony, particularly not in the resonant phrases from the strings that begin the work.

The Symphony’s key is listed as D minor, but this opening passage actually uses the pitches of the Dorian mode , a sound from older church music. Within the first main section, only a handful of notes stray from the purity of that mode. The second movement has a rather quick tempo marking for a slow movement, Allegretto moderato, but apparently Sibelius envisioned it at a slower pace and only marked it up to counteract the tendency in those days for maestros to conduct “quite lethargically.” The movement again spends long stretches in un-doctored modes, exploring stepwise melodies of different lengths and rates. The short third movement serves the function of a scherzo, using a lively rhythmic gait like that of a galloping horse and harmonies and melodies that once again explore stepwise themes and modal constructions. The recurring modes and motives that shape this Symphony reach their fullest expression in the finale, which begins with a passage of church harmonies and hymn-like phrases. The ending returns to that material and then settles on a response that is even more veiled and soft-spoken as it retakes the home key.

Information on the Sixth Symphony from the official Sibelius site Biography of Sibelius during the period he composed the Sixth Symphony Translated excerpts from Sibelius’ private diaries Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105 (1924) Approximate duration: 22 minutes The single-movement Symphony No. 7 that Sibelius composed in 1924 (under the original title Fantasia sinfonica) turned out to be his last. He added one more orchestral score in 1926, the bleak tone poem Tapiola , and he started an Eighth Symphony but destroyed the incomplete sketches, choosing to live out his final decades in silence. The Seventh Symphony forms an arc that begins in an Adagio tempo, where it also ends some 22 minutes later. The opening passage climbs up a scale and then winds through slowly morphing harmonies, waiting more than a minute before its first fleeting arrival on the tonic chord of C major. One of the most glorious moments comes when this Adagio music blooms for a noble trombone solo.

A seamless transition leads into a faster, scherzo-like section that begins with dry staccato articulations and chatter back and forth between the winds and strings. Leaving that faster tempo, a scale climbs step-by-step (echoing the symphony’s first phrases) over churning strings until we arrive back at the Adagio tempo and a restatement of the trombone theme. Another variant of that melody leads into the concluding passage. The tonal yearning that has built up throughout the symphony withholds release until the very last moment, when the strings make one last heroic rise of a half-step to settle the final chord. History and program note from the official Sibelius site Audio program on the Seventh Symphony from the BBC Music notation software named for the composer -- Copyright © 2016 Aaron Grad Aaron Grad is a composer, guitarist and writer based in Seattle. Besides providing program notes for the New World Symphony, he has been the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s program annotator since 2005 and also contributes notes to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Seattle Symphony. Audio clips provided by Naxos of America, Inc. Hector Berlioz Harold in Italy, Op.

16 (1834) Approximate duration: 42 minutes Berlioz received his primary education at home from his father, an eminent physician who expected his son to join him in the medical profession. As a teenager, Berlioz took flute and guitar lessons and taught himself the rudiments of composition and music theory, but he obliged his father by enrolling in medical school. Four years later, though, disgusted by “dirty hospital orderlies, dreadful dissecting-room attendants, hideous corpses, the screams of patients [and] the groans and rattling breath of the dying,” he abandoned medicine and took up music. Berlioz eventually enrolled at the Paris Conservatory, where he developed a reputation as an outsider and iconoclast—a position confirmed by the shocking Symphonie fantastique from 1830, which led to his expulsion. That same year, he won the Prix de Rome with a cantata that demonstrated more restraint and rule-following than his previous entries, and in 1831 he left Paris, reluctantly, to commence the Italian residency granted to prizewinners.

He lived in Rome for more than a year, although he ventured out as often as he could; he later wrote, “Rome is the most stupid and prosaic city I know: it is no place for anyone with head or heart.” Although the Rome of his day held little interest for Berlioz, a romanticized notion of Italy, especially as expressed through literature, became an ongoing font of inspiration, as found in his “dramatic symphony” modeled after Romeo and Juliet (set in Verona) and in the opera Benvenuto Cellini , which depicted an artist of the Italian Renaissance. His first work in that vein was Harold in Italy, composed in 1834 and based loosely on the narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron . The impetus to compose Harold in Italy came from the superstar violinist Niccolò Paganini , who wanted to showcase his Stradivarius viola . Instead of a viola concerto, Berlioz constructed Harold in Italy as a four-movement symphony featuring the viola as a musical protagonist. Paganini was not happy about the viola’s limited role and the long stretches of silence in the solo part and he opted not to play it.

Still, he was so impressed when he first heard it several years later that he gave Berlioz a sizable check to fund future projects. Berlioz titled the first movement, “Harold in the Mountains. Scenes of Melancholy, Happiness and Joy.” There is indeed a melancholic mood in the first three minutes or so, during an orchestral introduction, but the atmosphere turns more serene with the entrance of the viola, accompanied by harp, playing the first instance of a melody that recurs throughout the symphony to signify Harold. For the second movement, “March of the Pilgrims Singing the Evening Prayer,” the viola appears as an outside observer, rehashing a version of the same unifying melody (in its own slower pace) as the pilgrims shuffle past. The pattern repeats in the third movement, “Serenade of an Abruzzi Mountain-Dweller to his Mistress.” The rustic love scene set in central Italy is well underway by the time Harold arrives with another statement of the identifying theme. Like a musical slide show (or travel blog), the finale starts by recapping high points of the journeys undertaken in the preceding movements.

The scene then moves to an “Orgy of Brigands,” using wild, dramatic music to depict the debauchery of a band of outlaws. The viola makes one last meek appearance at the end, supported by other string soloists from offstage, until the fracas resumes. History of Paganini’s viola and its sibling Stradivarius instruments Chronology of Berlioz’ visits to Italy Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy; Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony; and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. In addition to these posts, he maintains an active presence guest conducting with the major orchestras of Europe and the United States. Born in Los Angeles, Mr. Tilson Thomas is the third generation of his family to follow an artistic career. His grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, were founding members of the Yiddish Theater in America. His father, Ted Thomas, was a producer in the Mercury Theater Company in New York before moving to Los Angeles where he worked in films and television.

His mother, Roberta Thomas, was the head of research for Columbia Pictures. Mr. Tilson Thomas began his formal studies at the University of Southern California where he studied piano with John Crown and conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl. At age 19 he was named Music Director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra. He worked with Stravinsky, Boulez, Stockhausen and Copland on premieres of their compositions at Los Angeles’ Monday Evening Concerts. During this same period he was the pianist and conductor for Gregor Piatigorsky and Jascha Heifetz. In 1969, after winning the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood, he was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That year he also made his New York debut with the Boston Symphony and gained international recognition after replacing Music Director William Steinberg in mid-concert. He was later appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra where he remained until 1974.

He was Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic from 1971 to 1979 and a Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1981 to 1985. His guest conducting includes appearances with the major orchestras of Europe and the United States. His recorded repertoire of more than 120 discs includes works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Prokofiev and Stravinsky as well as his pioneering work with the music of Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Steve Reich, John Cage, Ingolf Dahl, Morton Feldman, George Gershwin, John McLaughlin and Elvis Costello. He also recorded the complete orchestral works of Gustav Mahler with the San Francisco Symphony. Mr. Tilson Thomas’ television work includes a series with the London Symphony Orchestra for BBC Television, the television broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts from 1971 to 1977 and numerous productions on PBS’ Great Performances. Mr.

Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony produced a multi-tiered media project, Keeping Score, which includes a television series, web sites, radio programs and programs in schools. In 1990 Mr. Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony were presented in a series of benefit concerts for UNICEF in the United States, featuring Audrey Hepburn as narrator of From the Diary of Anne Frank, composed by Mr. Tilson Thomas and commissioned by UNICEF. This piece has since been translated and performed in many languages worldwide. In August 1995 he led the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra in the premiere of his composition Showa/Shoah, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Thomas Hampson premiered his settings of poetry by Walt Whitman, Renée Fleming premiered his settings of the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the San Francisco Symphony premiered his concerto for contrabassoon entitled Urban Legend.

As a Carnegie Hall Perspectives Artist from 2003 to 2005, he had an evening devoted to his own compositions which included Island Music for four marimbas and percussion, Notturno for solo flute and strings and a new setting of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. Other compositions include Street Song for brass instruments and Agnegram, an overture for orchestra. Among his many honors and awards, Mr. Tilson Thomas is a Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, was Musical America’s Musician of the Year and Conductor of the Year, Gramophone Magazine’s Artist of the Year and has been profiled on CBS’s 60 Minutes and ABC’s Nightline. He has won 11 Grammy Awards for his recordings. In 2008 he received the Peabody Award for his radio series for SFS Media, The MTT Files. In 2010 President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the United States Government.

Roberto Díaz, viola Photo credit: Henry Fair A violist of international reputation, Roberto Díaz is president and chief executive officer of the Curtis Institute of Music, following in the footsteps of renowned soloist/directors such as Josef Hofmann, Efrem Zimbalist and Rudolf Serkin. As a teacher of viola at Curtis and former principal viola of The Philadelphia Orchestra, Mr. Díaz has already had a significant impact on American musical life and continues to do so in his dual roles as performer and educator. As a soloist, Mr. Díaz collaborates with leading conductors of our time on stages throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. He has also worked directly with important 20th- and 21st-century composers, including Krzysztof Penderecki, whose Viola Concerto he has performed numerous times with the composer on the podium and whose Double Concerto he premiered in the United States during the 2013-14 season; and Edison Denisov, who invited Mr. Díaz to Moscow to work on and perform his Viola Concerto. Ricardo Lorenz and Roberto Sierra have written concertos for Mr.

Díaz and he premiered a concerto by Jennifer Higdon in 2015. As a frequent recitalist, Mr. Díaz enjoys collaborating with young pianists, bringing a fresh approach to the repertoire and providing invaluable opportunities to artists at the beginning of their careers. In addition to performing with major string quartets and pianists in chamber music series and festivals worldwide, Mr. Díaz has toured Europe, Asia and the Americas a member of the Díaz Trio with violinist Andrés Cárdenes and cellist Andrés Díaz. The Díaz Trio has recorded for the Artek and Dorian labels. Mr. Díaz’ recordings on the Naxos label with pianist Robert Koenig include the complete works for viola and piano by Henri Vieuxtemps and a Grammy-nominated disc of viola transcriptions by William Primrose. Also on Naxos are the Brahms sonatas with Jeremy Denk and Jonathan Leshnoff’s Double Concerto with violinist Charles Wetherbee and the Iris Chamber Orchestra led by Michael Stern. On the New World Records label is a live recording of Mr.

Díaz’ performance of Jacob Druckman's Viola Concerto with Wolfgang Sawallisch and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Upcoming releases include the Walton Viola Concerto with the New Haven Symphony and William Boughton (Nimbus) and the Viola Concerto by Peter Lieberson with the Odense Symphony Orchestra and Scott Yoo (Bridge Records). Since founding Curtis On Tour six seasons ago, Mr. Díaz has taken the hugely successful program to North and South America, Europe and Asia, performing chamber music side-by-side with Curtis students and other faculty and alumni of the school. In addition to Curtis On Tour, his tenure as president of Curtis has seen the construction of a significant new building which doubled the size of the school’s campus, the introduction of classical guitar and string quartet programs, the launch of Curtis Summerfest which is open to the public and the debut of an online stage called Curtis Performs. In the fall of 2013 Curtis became the first classical music conservatory to offer free online classes through Coursera. Also under Mr.

Díaz’ leadership, the school has developed lasting collaborations with other music and arts institutions in Philadelphia and throughout the world and has established the Community Artists Program (CAP) to develop the entrepreneurial and advocacy skills of young musicians. Mr. Díaz received an honorary doctorate from Bowdoin College and was awarded an honorary membership by the national board of the American Viola Society. In the fall of 2013 Mr. Díaz became a member of the prestigious American Philosophical Society founded by Benjamin Franklin. As a member of The Philadelphia Orchestra, he was selected by Music Director Christoph Eschenbach to receive the C. Hartman Kuhn Award, given annually to "the member of The Philadelphia Orchestra who has shown ability and enterprise of such character as to enhance the standards and the reputation of The Philadelphia Orchestra." Mr. Díaz received a bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Burton Fine, and a diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where his teacher was his predecessor at The Philadelphia Orchestra, Joseph de Pasquale. Mr. Díaz also has a degree in industrial design.

In addition to his decade-long tenure as principal viola of The Philadelphia Orchestra, where he performed the entire standard viola concerto repertoire with the orchestra and gave a number of Philadelphia Orchestra premieres, Mr. Díaz was also principal viola of the National Symphony under Mstislav Rostropovich, a member of the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa and a member of the Minnesota Orchestra under Sir Neville Marriner. Mr. Díaz plays the ex-Primrose Amati viola. 500 17th Street San Francisco Symphony - Berlioz: Harold in Italy, Opus 16 San Francisco Symphony Berlioz: Harold in Italy, Opus 16 Harold in Italy, Symphony in Four Parts, Opus 16 HECTOR-LOUIS BERLIOZ BORN: December 11, 1803. Côte-Saint-André, Department of lsère, France DIED: March 8, 1869. Paris COMPOSED: 1834.

Berlioz called Harold in Italy a “symphony in four parts with solo viola (avec un alto principal)” WORLD PREMIERE: November 23, 1834. Narcisse Girard conducted, and the viola soloist was Chrétien Urhan, in Paris US PREMIERE: May 9, 1863. Theodore Thomas conducted, with Emil Mollenhauer as viola soloist, in New York SFS PERFORMANCES: FIRST—February 15-17, 1945. Pierre Monteux conducted, and the viola soloist was Ferenc Molnar, then the Orchestra’s principal violist.

MOST RECENT, in June 2010, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted, with soloist Jonathan Vinocour INSTRUMENTATION: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (1 doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, ophicleide or bass tuba, timpani, snare drum, triangle, cymbals, harp, solo viola, at least 15 each of 1st and 2nd violins, at least 10 violas, at least 12 cellos, and at least 9 basses DURATION: About 43 mins In his Memoirs, Berlioz recalls a concert from December 22, 1833, when the principal work was the Symphonie fantastique. The music “from the first took the hall by storm. My success was complete. . . . The players . . . were radiant with enthusiasm as they left the platform.

To crown my good fortune, one member of the audience stayed behind in the empty hall, a man with long hair and piercing eyes and a strange, ravaged countenance, a creature haunted by genius, a Titan among giants, whom I had never seen before, the first sight of whom stirred me to the depths. He stopped me in the passage and seizing my hand uttered glowing eulogies that thrilled and moved me to the depths. It was Paganini. . . . “A few weeks after the concert . . . Paganini came to see me. He told me he had a Stradivarius viola, a marvelous instrument, which he wanted to play in public; but he lacked the right music. Would I write him a piece for it? ‘You are the only one I would trust with such a commission,’ he said. I replied that I was more flattered than I could say, but that to live up to his expectations and write a work that showed off a virtuoso such as he in a suitably brilliant light, one should be able to play the viola, which I could not. ‘No, no, I insist,’ he said; ‘you will manage.

I can’t possibly do it—I am too ill to compose.’ “So, to please the great man, I attempted to write a solo for the viola, but a solo combined with orchestral accompaniment in such a way as to leave the orchestra full freedom of action; for I was confident that, by the incomparable power of his playing, Paganini would be able to maintain the supremacy of the soloist. The concept struck me as new; and before long a rather happy scheme for the work had formed itself in my mind which I was eager to carry out. At the sight of so many rests in the viola part in the allegro he exclaimed: ‘That’s no good. There’s not enough for me to do here. I should be playing all the time.’ ‘That’s exactly what I said,’ I replied. ‘What you want is a viola concerto, and in this case only you can write it.’ He did not answer; he looked disappointed, and went away without referring to my symphonic fragment again. A few days later . . . he left for Nice. It was three years before he returned.

“Realizing that my scheme would never suit him, I set to work to carry it out with a different emphasis and without troubling myself any more about how to show off the viola in a brilliant light. My idea was to write a series of orchestral scenes in which the solo viola would be involved, to a greater or lesser extent, like an actual person, retaining the same character throughout. I decided to give it as a setting the poetic impressions recollected from my wanderings in the Abruzzi, and to make it a kind of melancholy dreamer in the style of Byron’s Childe Harold. Hence the title of the symphony, Harold in Italy.

As in the Symphonie fantastique, a motto (the viola’s first theme) recurs throughout the work, but with the difference that whereas the theme of the Symphonie fantastique, the idée fixe, keeps obtruding like an obsessive idea on scenes that are alien to it and deflects the current of the music, the Harold theme is superimposed on the other orchestral voices so as to contrast with them in character and tempo without interrupting their development.” Berlioz also tells us how Paganini came to a concert on December 16, 1838, when the program included the Fantastique and Harold, along with excerpts from Gluck’s Alceste: “The concert had just ended; I was worn out, lathered in perspiration and shaking all over, when Paganini, followed by his son Achille, came up to me at the orchestra door, gesticulating violently. He was already suffering from the disease of the larynx which killed him, and had completely lost his voice, so that unless it was absolutely quiet only his son could hear or rather divine what he was saying.

He made a sign to the child, who stood on a chair and put his ear close to his father’s mouth. Having listened carefully, the boy got down again and addressed me: ‘My father bids me tell you, sir, that never in all his life has he been so affected by any concert. Your music has overwhelmed him, and it is all he can do not to go down on his knees to thank you.’ At these astonishing words I made a gesture of embarrassment and incredulity; but Paganini, seizing me by the arm and hoarsely whispering with what was left of his voice, ‘Yes, yes,’ dragged me back onto the platform, where many of the players still lingered. There he knelt and kissed my hand. No need to describe my feelings: the facts speak for themselves. “Coming out in a state of fever-heat, I met Armand Bertin on the boulevard. I stood for some time in the bitter air, telling him of the scene that had just taken place, and caught a chill. When I got home, I retired to bed, iller than ever. Two days later I was alone in my room when the door opened and little Achille came in.

‘My father will be very sorry to hear that you are still unwell,’ he said. ‘If he were not so ill himself he would have come to see you. Here is a letter he told me to bring.’ I was about to open it when the child stopped me. ‘There is no reply; my father said you would read it when you were by yourself.’ With that, he left. "I supposed it to be a letter of congratulation. I opened it and read: "‘My dear friend, "‘Beethoven being dead, only Berlioz can make him live again; and I who have heard your divine compositions, so worthy of the genius you are, humbly beg you to accept, as a token of my homage, twenty thousand francs, which Baron de Rothschild will remit to you on your presenting the enclosed. “‘Believe me ever your most affectionate friend, “‘Nicolò Paganini’" Like many French artists and intellectuals of his generation, Berlioz was deeply in the thrall of Byron.

Harold in Italy is, however, far from being a direct translation into music of episodes from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, though the general idea of Harold, the melancholy dreamer, the sensitive observer, always steadfastly himself, is certainly Byronic enough. At the same time, though the “Harold” theme (which is the first music you hear the solo violist play) stands unchanged in its surroundings and is seemingly untouched by context, it is the source of the motivic ideas from which the symphony’s themes are made. Berlioz presents us with four tableaux, of which the first, with its progression from the darkness of the initial fugato to the brightness of the conclusion, and for which the composer recycled ideas from his Rob Roy Overture, is the most elaborate and varied. The picturesque Pilgrims’ March early led an independent life of its own, though Berlioz noted that it never made as striking an effect as a detached concert number as it did when heard within the framework of the entire Harold symphony. In the Serenade, Berlioz invents charming play with combinations of tempi, musical characters, and themes.

The orgy Berlioz described as a movement "where wine, blood, joy, and rage mingle in mutual intoxication and make music together, and the rhythm seems now to stumble, now to rush furiously forward, and the mouths of the brass to spew forth curses, answering prayers with blasphemy, and [the brigands] laugh and swill and strike, smash, kill, rape, and generally enjoy themselves." Earlier themes are recollected in the manner of the finale of the Beethoven Ninth, this being probably the earliest of countless imitations of that device. Harold-viola withdraws early, to make just one brief and quiet reappearance near the end before being drowned in the orchestra’s orgiastic racket. —Michael Steinberg Berlioz’s account of how Harold in Italy came to be composed is taken from David Cairns’s translation of the composer’s Memoirs, reprinted here by kind permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. This note originally appeared in somewhat different form in the program book of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, @ 1979, and is reprinted here by permission.

Michael Steinberg, the San Francisco Symphony’s program annotator from 1979 to 1999 and a contributing writer to our program book until his death in July 2009, was one of the nation’s pre-eminent writers on music. We are privileged to continue publishing his program notes. His books are available at the Symphony Store in Davies Symphony Hall. More About the Music Recordings: Pinchas Zukerman with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (Decca) | William Primrose with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra (Music & Arts Programs of America) | Wolfram Christ with Lorin Maazel and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon) | Yehudi Menuhin with Sir Colin Davis and the Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI Classics) Reading: Berlioz: The Making of an Artist, 1803-1832 and Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness, volumes 1 and 2 of a Berlioz biography by David Cairns (University of California Press) | Berlioz, by D.

Kern Holoman (Harvard University Press) | Berlioz, by Hugh Macdonald (Oxford Master Musicians series) On DVD: For more on the composer, check out Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony in the DVD Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, part of our Keeping Score series (SFS Media) (March 2016) Classical Notes - Classical Classics - Berlioz: Harold in Italy, By Peter Gutmann (1876 - 1975) with his viola Indeed, in his M�moires Berlioz deplored the "antique, absurd and deplorable prejudice that had handed over the performance of the viola parts to second or third-rate violinists. Whenever a violinist is mediocre, it is said, 'He would make a capital violist.'" Berlioz seized upon the viola's status as an outsider in the world of 19th century music (with which he undoubtedly identified) to fashion a fascinating, highly personalized role for it throughout Harold. Like Berlioz himself, the solo viola finds itself increasingly isolated from the orchestral mainstream.

In the first movement, it seems at one with the orchestral depiction of nature – it launches the Harold theme to break out of the rigidity of the opening orchestral fugue, and then in a series of fitful rising figures, struggles to rouse itself and find an appropriate melody for the sonata portion, in which the full orchestra heartily joins, producing a partnership where each stimulates the other in a unified concerted blend of rising excitement and driving momentum. The relationship unravels in the second movement, though – at first an augmented Harold theme blends harmoniously with the pilgrim song, next becomes disruptive with triplet rhythm, and then turns downright annoying, as rapid arpeggiated chords (emulating the guitar Berlioz liked to strum on his mountain walks) are played sul ponticello [near the bridge] for a gratingly nasal, whiny tone that sours the peaceful meditation of the solemn prayer like a rowdy child in church. The third movement finds the solo viola marginalized, emerging only to play its Harold theme as a distant observer to the intensely human amorous activity being depicted.

After the finale leaves reminiscences of the earlier movements behind, the viola is utterly silent, as if Berlioz, having conjured an onslaught of evil and rebellion, finds himself too timid to join in – or, as if, as Hugh Macdonald put it, Berlioz was temperamentally a stranger to his own wishful imaginings. Indeed, it is only heard once more – harmonizing with the off-stage trio's vain attempt to restore a brief breath of serene stability, after which the boiling orchestra leaves them all decisively behind to seal its mutiny. In his M�moires, Berlioz blamed the disastrous November 23, 1834 premiere of Harold on the conductor, Girard, who failed to accelerate the end of the first movement, leaving it cold and languid, and then lost count during an encore of the second, calling out for the orchestra to jump to the end. But no matter – the audience seemed far more interested in La Captive, Berlioz's setting of the Hugo poem of the erotic reveries of a harem slave.

(The next performance two weeks later gained even lesser notice – the audience was wowed by Chopin, a guest star who played the Romanze from his first piano concerto.) Berlioz was so upset by the premiere that he resolved never to let anyone else conduct any of his work, and to prevent inadequate performances he closely guarded the scores and delayed their publication (Harold appeared only in 1848). Even so, for posterity, Berlioz left some quixotic and obsessively detailed instructions in his score, including placement of the players (the solo viola is to be near the harp), the type of drum-sticks to use on various phrases, the method of rolling tambourines (with the fingers), the number of beats to give in certain measures, and a caution that a gradual crescendo is to extend evenly over 115 measures. By all accounts, including his own, Berlioz was an exacting conductor who rehearsed each section intensively – from a 1843 concert he cut the finale, finding the trombones incompetent and the violins too few for the sound he required.

(The sound Berlioz sought was indeed mammoth – his ideal orchestra would have had 435 players, including 120 violins, 16 horns and 30 harps!) Perhaps in reaction to the emotional egoistic style of Paganini that induced the work, and consistent with his goal of teamwork among all players, Berlioz criticized Wagner's conducting as too free and acclaimed a performance of Harold in which the viola solo had fine rhythmic control and another in which the solo was played by a violinist of the orchestra "who had no pretensions to being a virtuoso." We can only wonder what the impassioned composer would have thought of the diverse recordings we now have of his neglected symphony. While according to Lance Brunner's compilation, the Symphonie Fantastique boasted four complete recordings (led by Rhen�-B�ton, Fried, Weismann and Weingartner) within the first year of the electrical era, William Primrose Harold had to wait nearly two more decades for its phonographic debut by the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Serge Koussevitzky, with William Primrose, violist (now on Biddulph or Naxos CDs).

Fortunately, the result was not a mere performance but a true interpretation, bursting with stirring character and probing expression. The first movement is full of tension as the viola leaps ahead, eager for discovery, even as its dark tone suggests lurking menace and the nervous phrasing of the orchestra dispels any sense of a joyous romp in the country. The second movement is unified by a deeply meditative spirituality as the enchanted viola blends effortlessly into the strings' song, and then complements the central section with tender and wistful arpeggios, each shimmering chord and phrase exquisitely molded. The third, too, is cast in a dream-state, with smoothly blended transitions between the disparate sections to modulate the rusticity. The finale brilliantly reflects the composer's historical position by treading a highly appropriate balance between emotional excess and restrained classicism, delving beneath the surface to find a core layer of disturbing terror. The solo viola ardently pleads for a return to stability by stating the earlier themes with pride before reluctantly succumbing to the orchestral entreaty to join the revelry.

Climaxes are labored, their gravity defeating any mood of genuine liberation, with distorted bass drum and ear-splitting cymbals (abetted by the stressed recording quality) tearing the sonic fabric with regret and anguish. The trombones stride atop the texture, to reflect the composer's love of the instrument and the importance he attached to its deep but hair-raising sustained tone. Primrose recalled that he first learned the part at the request of Arturo Toscanini for a 1939 broadcast concert by the NBC Symphony, in which he was the co-principal violist, before embarking on a solo career. That thrilling event is preserved in rather crude sound on a Music & Arts CD. We also have a more sonically flattering, but far less exciting, recording of another 1953 Toscanini/NBC broadcast, with the orchestra's other co-principal violist, Carlton Cooley (BMG). Despite balances that over-emphasize the soloist, who nearly overrides the full orchestra's volume, the 1939 version is far more dynamic, with thrillingly precise ensemble and rhythmic articulation.

While the second rendition emphasizes the work's classicism through its unyielding pace (except for acceleration at the very end of the first and last movements), the earlier concert adds an extra measure of energetic abandon and a more subtle flexibility of tempo and phrasing, and its sheer visceral impact is enhanced by a powder-dry acoustic without even a hint of echo or concert-hall atmosphere. The solo playing reflects the diverse aura of each performance, with Primrose wonderfully inflected in the first and Cooley far more reserved in the second. For quite a while it seemed that Primrose virtually owned Harold on record. He returned as soloist in 1952 with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting his Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Sony).

As with his acclaimed recordings of the Symphonie Fantastique (EMI) and Requiem (BBC), Beecham crafts a patient, graceful and beautifully balanced reading radiating grace and moderation, as if to sublimate his own character to let the music itself gleam (thus, neutrality without the unrelenting rigidity and emotional detachment that drags down the 1953 Toscanini record and that perhaps reached its nadir in the 1977 recording by Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra with Robert Vernon on a London LP). While this approach can be lauded as respecting Berlioz, it can also be viewed as a disappointingly aloof refusal to engage the deeply personal passions that fueled composition of this work in the first place. (A 1956 Beecham BBC concert with Frederick Riddle (BBC CD) is slightly brusque and compromised by horrendous solo playing.) Primrose appeared yet again in 1958 in the first stereo Harold with Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony (RCA).

Never one to wallow in emotional excess, Munch delivers the fastest Harold on record at a breathless 38 minutes, only in part by omitting the first movement exposition repeat (which would have added about 1� minutes). The fleet tempos allow no lingering over details. Thus, the first movement is more a jog than a jaunt through the country and the cruel velocity of the arpeggios in the second really put Primrose to the test (which he passes brilliantly). The third is normally paced, and thus foregoes the shift to a faster gear that usually follows the placid second, while the sweet, vibrato-laden solo discounts the "leather lunged" serenader the composer described. The sharp and clear finale upholds a sense of musical abstraction above the score's characterization of carousing. Balances exaggerate the harp and triangle but the sparkling, transparent recording displays the conductor's characteristic lack of pretension. Curiously, despite Berlioz's present regard as the quintessential French composer of his time, we have few recordings of Harold by French conductors.

Aside from the atypical Munch, one of the very few others hails from the Montreal Symphony led by Charles Dutoit with Pinchas Zuckerman (London) and it's a beauty. At 45 minutes, it's the most leisurely-paced Harold I've heard on record, with exceptionally smooth, blended and patient unfolding of the musical splendors enhanced by Zuckerman's liquid, romanticized phrasing. Yet, to avoid wallowing in thickened textures, the sonority throughout is crisp and textures are luminous. The third movement, in particular, overflows with sheer love for the bucolic scenes that inspired Berlioz. Another dynasty of Harold recordings to place alongside Primrose's are the three led by Colin Davis. Perhaps recalling the work's origin, Davis's first 1963 recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI) features the acclaimed Yehudi Menuhin who, like Paganini, was a famed violinist. (Primrose also began his career and made early recordings on the violin, but then abandoned it for the viola.) Perhaps in recognition of Menuhin's status, Davis defers to his soloist's proclivity for inflection.

Menuhin's fame appeared to have guided the album's marketing as well, as his name appeared on the LP cover in a far larger font than either conductor or orchestra (and of the performers only Menuhin is identified on the spine labeling). At 44� minutes, the reading is rather bland and catches fire only at the very end, as urgent accents colorfully fight the otherwise steady underlying rhythm. A Davis-led 1975 Philips LP with the London Symphony Orchestra and Nobuko Imai is sharper, quicker, more rhythmically taut, and less solo-dominated. Davis's most recent Harold is a 2003 London Symphony concert with Tabea Zimmerman (2003, LSO CD) – even faster and more vibrant than in 1975, with each section keenly characterized, but especially remarkable for the extraordinary detail of the recording, from which timbres constantly emerge, fostering a fine appreciation for Berlioz's famed orchestration skills. Although a bit bass-shy, the textural differentiation strongly suggests a sonority that approaches the composer's own aesthetic.

For the full historical treatment, John Eliot Gardiner leads Gerard Causs� and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique (1994, Philips CD) in a reading that consciously emulates the performance practices of the composer's time. In notes to their companion CD of the Symphonie Fantastique , Gardiner decried the "pummeling into conformity" by plusher sonorities of modern orchestras that yield a crude substitute for Berlioz's minutely calibrated timbres and textures, and instead justified a blend of authentic and new instruments to achieve an historical reappraisal by reconstructing the characteristic orchestral sound that Berlioz achieved with his supreme instrumentation skill. Their Harold indeed is remarkable, although there are some sonic compromises to modern ears; thus, while the sharp tympani are indeed thrilling, the trombones, which Berlioz regarded as a sonic anchor, emerge as rather light-weight for that role. The sheer sonority adds a vast infusion of telling character, especially evident in the finale, where inner voices hold their own and the shrill piccolo and swirling violins are highlighted rather than blending into the overall mix.

Despite these fine accounts from veteran conductors, let's not forget that Berlioz was only 31 years old when he wrote Harold. More than any other conductor, Leonard Bernstein led the score with a thrilling and highly appropriate youthful exuberance. His 1961 New York Philharmonic recording (Sony) was to have presented yet another solo by Primrose, who apparently fell ill, and so instead features William Lincer, the Philharmonic's principal violist who indeed seems fully integrated into the orchestral fabric and is closely miked for a further sense of immediacy and involvement. Sharp, brash and lean, the result comes close to the feel of period instrumentation, but with a riveting passion absent from most reconstructive attempts. Indeed, the performance is ardently romantic, bristling with energy as Bernstein strains to wrest the utmost fervor out of his forces. Bernstein also left us a 1977 remake with the Orchestre National de France and Donald McInnes (EMI), that is equally exciting, but in a more subtle way.

A companion French recording of the Symphonie Fantastique is overtly impetuous and meticulously detailed, but for the first movement of Harold Bernstein takes his cue from Toscanini's careful balance between classical restraint and rebellious invention to portray the duality of Berlioz's conception with constant excited outbursts that arise and subside naturally from within the French orchestral tradition of smooth, mellow sound in which the overall performance is nestled. The result is a fine depiction of the artistic struggle waged within the composer's soul, taking constant flight yet tempered by the aesthetic roots from which he could not fully extract himself. The middle movements provide a serene respite and lead naturally into the finale, which Bernstein depicts as troubled and dark, as if to accentuate the composer's inability to fully identify with his fantasy, but then caps it off with a wild and disconcerting final acceleration, as if to break the mood, shake off any philosophical burdens and arm the youthful Berlioz to prepare for new adventure. The thick sonic ambiance, which not only enhances the "French" sound of the ensemble but contributes so much to its effectiveness, may have arisen in part as an artifact of the quadraphonic format of the original release.

Among other recordings I've enjoyed, the budget-priced version by Rivka Golani and the San Diego Orchestra led by Yaov Talmi (Naxos), while lacking the distinction of those already noted, is surprisingly accomplished and idiomatic. And while at first glance the 37-minute Igor Markevitch recording with Heinz Kirchner seems to trump the others for speed, don't be fooled – the timing is due to a massive cut in the finale (from numbers 46 through 52 in the Breitkopf and H�rtel score), despite the composer having written out both identical iterations of the long middle section, as if to insist that the repeat was required. In any event, this is a sturdy, thick, heavily-textured Germanic reading, as would be expected from the Berlin Philharmonic – illustrating Paganini's insistence (seconded by Liszt) that Berlioz was the true artistic heir of Beethoven. But even amid the excellence of these recordings, my all-time favorite is the overlooked 1953 recording by Hermann Scherchen and the Royal Philharmonic (Westminster LP, briefly available in a 4-CD Tahra box).

Sharing much of the sense of sheer adventure of the 1961 Bernstein, and with even greater visceral excitement than the 1939 Toscanini, his approach channels Koussevitzy's huge unbridled personality but adds wild extremes, boasting both the slowest second movement on record and the fastest fourth. After a deceptively placid methodical opening, the mood is shattered with a sudden shift to vast velocity and force, as soloist Frederick Riddle, in far better form than with Beecham, digs into his instrument and tosses off his figures with striking staccato amid orchestral snarls. The middle movements boast distinctive, humanizing touches – the second evolves into a profoundly religious rapture, as gingerly phrasing gradually gains confidence with the lengthening lines, and the third evokes the amateurism of Berlioz's serenader through labored pacing and choppy accompaniment. But it's in the finale that Scherchen pulls out all the stops, violently contrasting the sweet moments of repose with wild breakneck climactic tempos, fully conveying the volatility of the composer's psyche, torn between the stability of social expectations and his fevered imagination.

Scherchen saves his biggest surprise for the very end, though – having led us to expect a truly ferocious finish, he catches us off guard with a thoroughly restrained final climax, as if to remind us that, after all, this is concert-hall music nestled in the conventions of a bygone era. Of all the performances on record, Scherchen's comes closest to conjuring for modern listeners the sheer shock and wonderment Berlioz's audiences must have felt when first encountering his music. The many sources for information about Harold In Italy and Berlioz in general begin with the composer's own M�moires, available in several editions and translations. Among biographies, I found those by D. Kern Holomon (Harvard University Press, 1989), David Cairns (University of California, 1999) and Hugh Macdonald (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1982) especially informative.

Macdonald also authored a BBC Music Guide to Berlioz's Orchestral Music (University of Washington Press 1969) and Cairns contributed a valuable article on Berlioz to The Symphony compendium edited by Robert Simpson (Penguin, 1966). The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz (edited by Peter Bloom, Cambridge University Press 2000) includes articles by Julian Preston on genre, Pierre Citron on the M�moires and Joel-Marie Fouquet on the Grande Trait� d'instrumentation et d'orchestration. Jacques Barzin's Berlioz and the Romantic Century (Little, Brown & Company 1950) is an extraordinary and extensive analysis of the composer in the context of his psyche and times. Paul Henry Lang's sweeping Music in Western Civilization (W. W. Norton & Company 1941) is deeply insightful and personal. Above all else, the full orchestral score (reprinted by Dover in the same volume as the Symphonie Fantastique , 1984) displays the extraordinary complexity of Berlioz's conception.

This article is indebted to all of these, along with liner notes to the LPs and CDs I've cited. Copyright 2008 by Peter Gutmann Harold en Italie Harold en Italie Program note © by D. Kern Holoman for a concert by the UCD (University of California, Davis) Symphony Orchestra, 2 June 1996. Harold en Italie is the central artifact of Berlioz's Prix de Rome sojourn, though in many ways Italy lies at the core of a good half of everything he wrote, from La Captive (Subiaco, February 1832) to both Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict at the end of his career. When Paganini came to commission a dramatic concerto for his Stradivarius viola, Berlioz's first idea was to reframe his Intrata di Rob-Roy MacGregor, one of the obligatory envois from Rome, which had failed in its premiere at the Société des Concerts on 14 April 1833.

With its titular allusion to Walter Scott's novel and an Allegro with melodic material perhaps developed from Robert Burns's Scots wha' hae wi' Wallace bled, the overture seemed ripe for reuse as Les Derniers Instants de Marie Stuart, for viola solo, orchestra, and chorus. But then, Berlioz writes, another movement came to him, and another, and meanwhile his imagination had grown more persuasively occupied by fond memories of Italyï¿½not so much Rome as the rustic Abruzzi brigands and pifferariï¿½than by Scottish lore. What resulted was a four-movement symphony with viola solo, cast as a panorama of vignettes overseen by the Romantic hero Harold, whose name was borrowed from Lord Byron's Childe Harold. Harold en Italie's hero, of course, is Berlioz himself: he had already described the vistas, pilgrim's march, and mountaineer's serenade in a string of articles that began in 1832 (later absorbed into his Voyage musical en Allemagne et en Italie, 1843, one of the primary sources for the Mémoires, 1870).

The text that became chapters 38ï¿½40 of the Mémoires amounts to a level of precompositional activity strongly parallel the Fantastique's program. At first glance Harold en Italie seems the least progressive of Berlioz's symphonies, to be numbered among the relatively few conservative works of the fertile decade from 1830 that saw the breathtaking advances of the Requiem, Cellini, and the Nuits d'été as well as the third and fourth symphonies. The four-movement schemeï¿½with Adagio and sonata Allegro, a slow march, scherzo, and finale with thematic recall of the previous movementsï¿½seems almost routinely Beethovenian. But with Harold Berlioz makes his next great aesthetic strides: in the domains of rhythm and the use of performance space. The viola soloistï¿½Haroldï¿½is instructed to stand well apart from the rest of the orchestra, in a splendid instance of the Romantic paradigm.

The violist's motive as presented in the opening Adagio, almost an idée fixe, is a tender but also rather brooding phrase in two halves, square and simple enough that it tends to fit effortlessly into the diverse contexts of the movements which follow. Much of the Adagio, including the great canon with ornamental surges up and back through the orchestra was adopted from the comparable position in Rob-Roy and retouched with a kind of decorative filigree at which Berlioz was becoming increasingly expert. The fugal opening is newly composed; possibly this passage served as a model for the beginning of Mendelssohn's Elijah, in D minor and along similar melodic lines. The unusual visual and acoustic effect of the violist's placement represents a step beyond the offstage oboe in the Fantastique in Berlioz's continuing investigation of performance space as compositional opportunity.

A high spot of spatial control in Harold is the center section of the Pilgrim's March, the canto religioso exchanged in long note values between winds and stringsï¿½from back to front of the orchestraï¿½as the viola figuration in sixteenths moves in two-octave arpeggiations sul ponticello across a wide pitch ambitus, while the march rhythms, quarters and eighths, continue in contrabass pizzicati. Here Berlioz has engaged musical space in virtually all its defining paramenters. Yet another spatial component is in play near the very end, with an offstage reminiscence of the Pilgrim's march from three solo strings with the viola soloist, still onstage, completing the quartet. From these passages it is but a step to the apocalyptic, in-the-round style of the Requiem on the one hand, and, on the other, such delicacies as the offstage angel chorus-with-closing-door of L'Enfance du Christ.

The rough model for the Pilgrim's March is the funeral cortège from the "Eroica," a movement that incited rapturous prose from Berlioz's pen owing to the poignancy of its dissolution. As in Beethoven the march passes by in a crescendo/decrescendo, and the chanting of the monks and monastery bell are roughly equivalent to Beethoven's tattoos and fanfares. Particular to Berlioz is the manipulation of the march melody to conclude each phrase at a higher pitch level. Berlioz surely found the source of his conspicuous new rhythmic vitalityï¿½most apparent, perhaps, in the Roman Carnival scene of Benvenuto Cellini, which comes just after Haroldï¿½in the naive yet riotous musical behavior of the peasant bands he encountered in the streets of Rome and in his sojourns in the Abruzzi. The rhythmic fabric of Harold reaches one of its peaks in the three-way réunion des thèmes of the Abruzzi serenade, movement III , a passage of which the composer was proud enough to cite it in his Grand Traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes of 1843.

Another comes in the roaring, brigandly low brass work at the center and climax of the fourth-movement "Orgie de brigands." In fact the finale has only one truly thematic subject, which we know to have been sketched for the abandoned Napoleonic Sinfonie militaire of 1832. If the Brigand's Orgy veers uncomfortably close, tactically, to the digressive style of the Fantastique's first movement, that is at least in part a function of the phantasmagoria being sought by the composer. At issue is the catalogue of souvenirs, Beethoven's Ninth-style, swept away in Bacchic revelry. (The suggestion, from the viola's silence, is that the narrator abandons up his watch to join in the excitement.) The sudden rise to a major-mode peroration, completing the overall key-scheme G minor/major ï¿½ E major (flavored with C major) ï¿½ C major ï¿½ G minor/major, begins the process of closure, with the offstage reminiscence, drunken semi-collapse, and momentum regained in a charge to the final bars.

In these surroundings elegance of form would have amounted to a contradiction of purpose. Harold en Italie was composed during the relatively brief period of domestic bliss that he was ever to enjoy: the first months of his marriage to Harriet Smithson. The ripening of his spirit is palpable: Harold is by turns exuberant and introspective, but always it has an inner warmth and perhaps even betrays hints of rare self- satisfaction. The experience of composing it, and the fond memories it evoked, were a major springboard to the glories of Cellini. Little matter that Paganini declined to play it: Chrétien Urhan, who did play it in 1834, was also a virtuoso, and his temperament was rather more suited to the role. Little matter, either, that the fastidious Narcisse Girard proved incapable of conducting Harold's rhythmic and metric ploys, for that failure is precisely what prompted Berlioz's decision to become a conductor and in due course to develop a comprehensive theory of the conductor's role in symphonic performance.

Both circumstances ï¿½that Paganini did not play Harold, and that Berlioz determined thenceforth to conduct his own works himselfï¿½set the stage for his symphonic masterpiece, Roméo et Juliette. Berlioz - Harold in Italy - 3MBS Subscribers can hear Berlioz’s Harold in Italy as broadcast on the Bose Afternoon Concert on Saturday 20th June 2015 . As winner of the Prix de Rome in 1830, Berlioz spent the following two years in Italy. He found musical life in Rome to be particularly uninspiring, and wrote little music there as a result. Berlioz’s second symphony, Harold in Italy (1834) draws inspiration from this period. Scored for the unusual combination of orchestra and solo viola, the four movements depict different recollections of Berlioz’s wanderings through the Abruzzi, a mountainous region east of Rome. The literary inspiration for Harold in Italy’s title comes from Lord Byron’s dramatic poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The poem depicts a young man’s search for pleasure, as he wanders through foreign land.

Berlioz’s memoirs reveal that the solo viola part was intended to express the melancholic dreams of Berlioz’s semi-autobiographical protagonist, Harold. Harold in Italy originally came at the request of Italian string virtuoso, Niccolo Paganini. Paganini approached Berlioz in 1833, after a performance of Berlioz’s first symphony, Symphonie Fantastique (1830). He asked if Berlioz would be interested in writing a concerto that he could perform on his new Stradivarius viola. Berlioz was reportedly hesitant to write for such a celebrated virtuoso, since he was unable to play the viola himself. But Paganini had faith in the composer, and he eventually agreed. After completing the first movement, Paganini insisted that Berlioz show him the work. He was disappointed to see how many rests there were, claiming, “there is not enough for me to do, I should be playing all the time”. Needless to say, Paganini didn’t like the work, and never performed it himself.

Yet Berlioz continued to work on it, changing the concept from a viola concerto to a symphony with solo viola. The premiere took place at the Paris Conservatoire in 1834, with the solo part performed by Chrétien Urhan, principal violist of the Paris Opera. The work was given several more performances in the following years, always with great success. Berlioz encountered Paganini again several years later in Paris, after he had conducted a concert of Harold in Italy and Symphonie Fantastique. It was the first time Paganini had heard the entirety of the work he had once requested. In his memoirs, Berlioz recounts a most unusual experience in which the famous virtuoso knelt before him, kissing his hand in front of the whole orchestra. Paganini’s sentiments were reinforced the following day, when he sent a letter to Berlioz’s home declaring that his musical genius destined him to carry on the great traditions of Beethoven. It also contained a humble offer of 20 000 francs, to be accepted as a token of gratitude for his divine compositions.

Berlioz was uncharacteristically speechless after such a gift, and used the money to suspend his work as a music critic. He later composed the choral symphony Romeo et Juliette, dedicating the work to Paganini. In the first movement of Harold in Italy, listen out for the mood changes between reflective melancholy and passionate joy, as we follow the protagonist through the mountains. The Abruzzi farmers can be heard singing hymns in the second movement, as they walk through the hills at the end of a long day. A mountaineer joyously serenades his lover in the third movement, and there is no denying the spirit of Beethoven in the finale. About Madeline Roycroft Madeline Roycroft is currently finishing an Honours degree in Musicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Her thesis looks at the reception of Shostakovich in France. She has completed a Diploma of Languages in French as well as undergraduate studies in musicology and oboe performance.

Harold in Italy | LA Phil Harold in Italy Composed: 1856-58 Length: 42 minutes Orchestration: 2 flutes (2nd = piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbals, tambourine, triangle), harp, strings, and solo viola First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: November 21, 1924, Walter Henry Rothwell conducting, with Emile Ferir, viola Berlioz spent more than a year in Italy in 1831 and 1832, having won the Prix de Rome, instituted by the French Government to enable French artists to study in an environment of classical art treasures, whether painting or sculpture. Musicians were loosely thought to need the same benefits, but for Berlioz the price of a few years' state pension was exile from the central sources of his art.

He found the cultivation of music in Italy indescribably narrow and parochial, and he developed a distaste for all Italian opera. It was in the country, in Subiaco, and on the long walk from Naples to Rome, that he really found musical inspiration. 'I long to go to Mount Posilippo,' he wrote, 'to Calabria, or to Capri, and put myself in the service of a brigand chief. That's the life I crave: volcanos, rocks, rich piles of plunder in mountain caves, a concert of shrieks accompanied by an orchestra of pistols and carbines, blood and Lacryma-Christi, a bed of lava rocked by subterranean tremors: voilà la vie!' At Alatri, on his return from Naples, Berlioz and his two Swedish companions spent a dreadful night on hard beds, plagued by fleas and by the 'young men serenading, going round the village all night singing beneath their mistresses' windows, to the accompaniment of a guitar and a terrible squawking clarinet'. Here clearly is the background to the last two movements of Harold en Italie. But the work did not come into being at that time.

In 1834, over a year after Berlioz's return to Paris, Paganini, in admiration of the Symphonie fantastique, asked Berlioz for a work in which he could display his powers on a fine Stradivarius viola. Berlioz at first planned a choral work based on the last hours of Mary Queen of Scots, but somehow the ideas were transmuted into the four-movement symphony with solo viola Harold en Italie, incorporating two passages that had actually been composed in Italy, Harold's own theme (the melody with which the solo viola first enters) and another theme in the first movement, both drawn from the overture Rob Roy, which Berlioz had recently rejected. The work was to be a series of Italian souvenirs in a symphonic frame. The character of Harold is derived loosely from Byron's Childe Harold, a melancholy wanderer who witnesses scenes of Italian life. All four movements picture outdoor scenes drawn from the most vivid experiences of his Italian sojourn. The first movement (a symphonic Allegro with a slow introduction) keeps the soloist busy, with many references to Harold's theme.

The second movement introduces the pilgrims and tolling bells featured in all musical and literary accounts of Italian landscape at that time, including Mendelssohn's. The Serenade is an ingenious exercise in creating atmosphere while at the same time combining different rhythms, the more languorous melody on the English horn unperturbed by the jaunty piping of the highlander or the stately span of Harold's theme. The last movement borrows the device of parading previous themes in the manner of Beethoven's Choral Symphony, not for any convincing dramatic reason, but to draw the work together and to pay tribute to the masterpiece which Berlioz had recently heard for the first time. The frenetic vigor of the finale makes a stirring close interrupted only once by distant memories of the pilgrims' march. Because it is a dramatic and expressive rather than a virtuoso work, the soloist is rarely the protagonist, more often a bystander marking his presence with a recurrent theme.

Paganini was startled and offended by this; he found the solo part 'too full of rests,' and never played it, though he later came to appreciate its worth by making Berlioz a gift of 20,000 francs, which enabled him to compose Roméo et Juliette. Harold en Italie is no concerto, even though the viola part calls for a player of great skill and sensitivity. The music is full of youthful vitality, tinged with that appealing romantic sensibility that Berlioz borrowed freely from literature. For him it was an autobiographical vignette, and the Italian experience was something to which all his later music, from Roméo et Juliette to Les Troyens would bear powerful witness. Hugh Macdonald is general editor of The New Berlioz Edition and a professor of music at Washington University in St. Louis.

Question: Premiered in 1834, Who composed Harold In Italy?
Answer: Berlioz