Berlioz: Harold in Italy

[Petrushka]

This is a piece I've never got to grips with and have only heard it live once (Bashmet/CBSO/Rattle 1991).
It doesn't seem a patch on the Symphonie Fantastique and I never know whether it's a symphony, concerto or a strange hybrid. It isn't represented on my CD shelves either and as I like most other Berlioz this is a strange omission.

Any fans of this work out there with something to say that might make me look at it again?

[Ariosto]

Don't waste time on it - it is 100% rubbish in my opinion.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I listened to this work only a few days ago. Clearly Berlioz thought of it as a symphony, but it is more of a hybrid symphony-concerto, just as Romeo & Juliet is a hybrid symphony-opera-cantata and Symphonie Funebre et Triomphale is a hybrid symphony and patriotic propaganda piece. I think the truth is that Berlioz peaked with his early Symphonie Fantastique and never quite reached the same heights again.

[Ariosto]

I think he only plumbed the depths in that piece .... It was written for Pagannini who never played it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is a piece I've never got to grips with and have only heard it live once (Bashmet/CBSO/Rattle 1991).
It doesn't seem a patch on the Symphonie Fantastique and I never know whether it's a symphony, concerto or a strange hybrid.

It took me a long time to get Berlioz: his melodies seemed rambling, his harmonies didn't seem to "fit", his structures sounded as if he was writing a bar at a time with no feeling for "joined-up writing", and his sense of genre seemed wilfully perverse. For me, it was the "excerpts" from the Romeo & Juliet Symphony that made me want to persist with his other Music: these three pieces were self-evidently works of astonishing genius; anyone who could produce Music of this standard deserved to be taken seriously.

In my case, I think my problems arose from expecting the Music to sound more "German". Repeated listenings made me aware of Berlioz' very individual logic in phrase, harmony and structure - and now I love it all: of French composers only Debussy is equal in my affections. Don't worry about what it's not: it's not a Symphony, it's not a Concerto, nor is it really a "hybrid". Instead, it's an inner response to the thoughts and moods Berlioz was compelled to write after reading Byron's poem. The Viola is the central character, observing and commenting on what happens around "him": for a lot of the time, the orchestra seem to be unaware of its presence - so a mood set up by the orchestra often "cuts" to the soloist's musings. It is bizarre and wonderful. I suggest you play the two central movements a few times: they're more (and this is a very relative term in this context) "conventional". Then just play the whole work three or four times.

And if it doesn't, it doesn't: but I hope it does!

Best Wishes.

[Petrushka]

Don't waste time on it - it is 100% rubbish in my opinion.

This was pretty much my opinion too on the very few occasions I've heard it. I've been wondering for years why the composer who could write such marvellous music as the Symphonie Fantastique and (agree with FHG here) the three orchestral pieces from Romeo and Juliet with its pre-echoes of Tristan, appeared to lose all inspiration with Harold. Always thought I must be missing something.

[LeMartinPecheur]

"Don't waste time on it - it is 100% rubbish in my opinion."

Well blow me down! Back in the early 70s Harold in Italy seemed to get plenty of airings on R3 and I fell in love with it just as much as with Symphonie fantastique In fact I bought the former on disc long before the latter!

I wish somebody had told me then that I was only listening to rubbish: how much time and money I'd have saved

Perhaps this was where R3 started to go off the rails?

[Petrushka]

"Don't waste time on it - it is 100% rubbish in my opinion."

Well blow me down! Back in the early 70s Harold in Italy seemed to get plenty of airings on R3 and I fell in love with it just as much as with Symphonie fantastique In fact I bought the former on disc long before the latter!

I wish somebody had told me then that I was only listening to rubbish: how much time and money I'd have saved

Perhaps this was where R3 started to go off the rails?

Interesting divergence of opinion here! LMP: can you say what it is about the piece that draws you to it and recommend a recording? Is the LSO Live Colin Davis any good?

[Don Petter]

I'm with ferney here. It does have quite a bit of musical lurching, but I love it. Try Primrose/Beecham, perhaps?

[Richard Tarleton]

I got to know this piece when studying the age of the European Romantics at university. I bought the Menuhin/Davis version in 1969, and remember Schidlof/Davis playing it at the Proms not long after. It explores the Romantic theme of the lone hero, see also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childe_Harold%27s_Pilgrimage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_on_the_Jungfrau_%281837%29

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/friedrich_caspar_david.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Childe_harold.jpg

Having said which, as a big Berlioz fan, I've always found it a bit of a disappointment - it starts well but rather peters out. These days I only seem to have the JEG version.

For what it's worth, my favourite Berlioz works these days are vocal ones - especially Les Nuits d'été, Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict. "Nuit d'ivresse" and "Nuit paisable et sereine" are two of the most sublime duets in the operatic repertoire, IMV.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think he only plumbed the depths in that piece .... It was written for Pagannini who never played it.

That had nothing to do with the quality of the music. It was simply that Paganini wanted something in which he would be playing for all or most of the time, being something of a showman.
I'm going to listen to it again this week.

[barber olly]

Don't waste time on it - it is 100% rubbish in my opinion.

Not a favourite work then?

[Roehre]

Harold en Italie is not a concerto. Berlioz rejected the idea of a concerto as soon as Paganini disapproved of the sketches. What Paganini might have liked becomes clear in his Le Couvent Du Mont St Bernard for violin, male chorus and orchestra, nearly contemporary with harold, and by chance to be broadcast coming Wednesday morning's TtN 12.42am-1.04am.
And though Harold is in a symphony form it isn't a symphony either: it is a symphonic poem in 4 movements and with the solo-viola as "lead-instrument" a kind of precursor of Strauss' Don Quixote.

The influence (consciously or unconsciously) stretches to Stravinsky - listen to the 1st mvt of Stravinsky's Sérénade en la and the Berlioz-connection becomes clear.

But the finale is in its backwards looking fashion Berlioz' answer to Beethoven's "nicht diese Töne" -
The Orgy of the Brigands begins with reminicences of the three previous movements, interrupted by the shouting of the robbers. "Harold" (the viola) dreams of better days and plays nostalgically melodies - the adagio of the introduction, the song of the pilgrims and the serenade- but the robbers' music contaminates it all increasingly. "Harold" reaches for his viola, is unable to get the right intervals and thus fails to play his own theme.
His playing fades. He dies. The robbers' music continues, thus ending the whole piece.

IMO Harold deserves to be kept in the same esteem as the Fantastique: it uses pretty well constructing and deconstructing techniques between viola and orchestra which easily could be 20C.

However: as far as harmonies in Berlioz are concerned, his immaculate orchestrations are perfectly disguising the rather simple, not very sophisticated harmonic progress of his pieces: Liszt covers them up with pianistic pyrotechnics (both in the Fantastique and the harold arrangements), but Berlioz' own piano version of the Nuits d'Eté shows this weakness mercilessly.

I like the piece, both in its original and in the Liszt viola-piano-"reduction".

As FHG IMO rightly says: listen to the piece a couple of times, and discover that it really is a master piece too.

[Roslynmuse]

I've just listened to the LSO Live CD. I've had it for some time and not got round to giving it an airing. Like others on here, I have never been as fond of Harold as of many of Berlioz's other works, and I can't remember the last time I heard it - possibly at the only live performance I've attended (BBC Phil/Tortelier in 1996). Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the piece, particularly the first two movements. The very opening has a wonderfully restless quality, and the sense of the viola soloist as the outsider, observing but always at one remove from the orchestra comes across strongly in Zimmermann's reading. Davis drives a swifter reading than others (no holding back for the brass triplets in the last movement) and in the rather dry acoustic it seems a bit uninvolved at times. The first recording I heard was Bernstein's EMI recording from the late 70s which had a lot more passion. Other random thoughts: there's a lot in mt 1 that reminds me of mt 5 of Symphonie Fantastique and possibly Berlioz shoots himself in his Byronic foot by leaving himself with nowhere to go in Harold's finale. That Brigand's Orgy has a lot in common with (of all things) the Menuet des Follets in The Damnation of Faust (orchestration, harmony, figuration) - hugely enjoyable, but not really a show-stopping conclusion like the Witches' Sabbath. The second movement is marvellously inventive (I think) - Zimmermann's arpeggios in harmonics make the latter part of it sound like a precursor of Arvo Part's Fratres! In complete contrast mt 3 reminded me of the more bucolic numbers of Iolanthe... (I suppose Sullivan got his pastoral drones from Gounod, and maybe - despite the age difference - Berlioz and Gounod shared a common source for such moments). Final thought - I wonder whether it is one of those works that from a player's point of view doesn't lift off the page? I can imagine how it might be unsatisfactory being just one line in a rather quirky construction. But, as a mere listener, I'm very happy to have spent 40-odd minutes in its company again!

[LeMartinPecheur]

Interesting divergence of opinion here! LMP: can you say what it is about the piece that draws you to it and recommend a recording? Is the LSO Live Colin Davis any good?

Ferney has got it dead right about the viola being the outsider & poetic dreamer, often in a different world from the musical material and mood of the orchestra. Both the soloist's material and the orchestra's were, and still are, for me intensely magical and memorable.

I bought the CBS Lincer/NYPO/Bernstein and have never regretted it. The more 'British' choice at the time would have been Menuhin & Davis on HMV. No idea actually why I didn't go for that one as I've often gone for Davis on Philips or LSO Live since in other Berlioz works. Perhaps it was just at a good price somewhere. Also I've no idea why I've never bought a second version - I usually do!

Perhaps some tide of critical or public-taste has turned in the last 40 years because nowadays R3 never seems to broadcast it live or on disc: I can't recall when I last heard it. Must give the ole LP a spin, tho' I'm hearing much of it in my head as I type!