Berlioz: Harold in Italy

[Ferretfancy]

I've always had a soft spot for the Menuhin recording, probably it was the first I really listened to, and also for the playing in the Pilgrim's Procession. Primrose recorded it twice, once with Koussevitsky and the Boston SO in 1944, and again in 1951 with Beecham and the RPO. There is also an excellent version with a violist called McInnes with the French National Orchestra and Bernstein,I have it on LP but I'm not sure if it's available on CD.
Tabeas Zimmermann and the LSO / Davis has to be the best modern performance.

Surely the approach with Berlioz is not to expect a concise structure, even the Fantastique doesn't have that, but to enjoy the journey and the great pleasures you experience on the way.For me, the pulse still quickens when I hear the opening of Le Carnaval Romain, it was the first record I ever bought, with Beecham on a scarlet label 78-very pricey!

[Roehre]

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

Clarification and explanation please.

[Colonel Danby]

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?

I think I was at the concert that you speak of with Rattle and Bashmet in 1991 (I had a season ticket for many years at the CBSO). 'Harold' is certainly not Berlioz's greatest work, but it deserves an occasional hearing. I've got Jiggers and the ORR who make a very good case for its place in the repertoire.

[mercia]

Berlioz shoots himself in his Byronic foot

they'll both be limping then

[rauschwerk]

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

Can't agree at all. Admittedly it's conventional beside Berlioz's other symphonies.

I once owned Menuhin/Davis on LP & now have Bernstein and Davis's second recording with Nobuko Imai. It's Imai/Davis that I recommend to anyone who is in doubt about the merits of this piece. Bernstein's finale is just too slow for Allegro frenetico. Didn't he trust his French orchestra to play it any quicker?

[aeolium]

I agree about Imai/Davis - a very good performance and one I still cherish.

Richard Tarleton is right that it helps to look at the romantic influences on this work, especially the Byron poem. It's also worth looking at what Berlioz says about it in the Memoirs: "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". And he goes on to say that the "Harold theme is superimposed on the other orchestral voices so as to contrast with them in character and tempo without interrupting their development". It was emphatically not a viola concerto - which was presumably the disappointment for Paganini - but the viola is used more as an obliggato instrument. Berlioz also interestingly comments that in the coda of the first movement "the tempo should gradually increase until it is twice as fast". It does seem to be a hard work to bring off in performance, but that should really be a challenge to the performers.

[umslopogaas]

“100% rubbish in my opinion”? Berlioz is by common consent a major composer of romantic music during the high noon of romanticism and I have on my shelves, without consciously making an effort to collect performances, recordings conducted by George Pretre, Colin Davis (twice), Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel and Igor Markevitch. Clearly all people of little perception and poor taste, in your opinion.

To remain polite, with some difficulty, in my opinion your opinion would have little stature in the opinion ratings of a room full of imbeciles.

Apologies if I sound a bit tetchy, I’ve had to get up earlier than usual for the kitchen refit company and I’m not at my most forgiving before nine in the morning.

[BBMmk2]

i have the box set of the ~Edition du Bicentinierre. A fantastic collection to have in anyone's, as far as i am concerned!! It includes the Harold en Italie to(Imai and Davis), as other people have said thoroughly reccomendable!

[Ariosto]

“100% rubbish in my opinion”? Berlioz is by common consent a major composer of romantic music during the high noon of romanticism and I have on my shelves, without consciously making an effort to collect performances, recordings conducted by George Pretre, Colin Davis (twice), Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel and Igor Markevitch. Clearly all people of little perception and poor taste, in your opinion.

To remain polite, with some difficulty, in my opinion your opinion would have little stature in the opinion ratings of a room full of imbeciles.

Apologies if I sound a bit tetchy, I’ve had to get up earlier than usual for the kitchen refit company and I’m not at my most forgiving before nine in the morning.

Most if not every composer has written very bad music at times, including the greatest composers. Berlioz is just about OK at his best, in my opinion, but works like H in I are not the sort of music I can be bothered with after the first couple of hearings.

Tough luck if you can't except my opinion, because it is not about to change. ( I heard the work a few months ago in a concert and it did nothing to change my mind).

[Ventilhorn]

Most if not every composer has written very bad music at times, including the greatest composers. Berlioz is just about OK at his best, in my opinion, but works like H in I are not the sort of music I can be bothered with after the first couple of hearings.

Tough luck if you can't except(?) my opinion, because it is not about to change. ( I heard the work a few months ago in a concert and it did nothing to change my mind).

I certainly would not condemn Berlioz as a composer of merit. The likes of Sir Thomas Beecham and Sir Colin Davis both championed his works and their opinions are good enough for me.

Romeo et Juliette, The Sinfonie Fantastique and many of his overtures are a delight to the ear, but I have to agree with Ariosto that "Harold in Italy" is a bore. To me it sounds like an overlong and over-orchestrated nursery rhyme. The fact that Ariosto, a former professional viola player, whose instrument lacks a wide solo repertoire, finds it unworthy, is significant.

I found the choral work "Le Grande Messe des Mortes" equally boring on the one occasion that I played in it, but who can ignore the delights of Beatrice and Benedict, Les Troyens, or Roman Carnival ─ to mention just a few of his other works?

VH

[Panjandrum]

The fact that Ariosto, a former professional viola player, whose instrument lacks a wide solo repertoire, finds it unworthy, is significant.

Would you rate his opinion as more significant than soloists like Bashmet, Imai and Zimmerman?

I found the choral work "Le Grande Messe des Mortes" equally boring

The poet Heine was moved by the Requiem to describe Berlioz as "that great antidiluvian bird, a colossal nightingale or a lark the size of an eagle". That's good enough for me.

[Chris Newman]

Back in the 60s I had a Supraphon LP recording of Harold en Italie with Josef Suk and the Czech PO conducted by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Very fine it was too: rich, dark and romantic. It is currently available for about £30 on CD on Amazon so I stick to my Imai though Suk can be got for pennies on on MP3. It is very much a work where you love it or are not to be impressed. I love it. It is not flashy but ruminative and conversational. I do not think many of my contemporaries are romantic enough to feel its subtle power: the same one's blow cold about Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande.

At the opposite end of the scale Grand Messe is one of those works that never has the same effect in recordings as performed live in a large space. The same might be said of some Bruckner Symphonies and Mahler's 8th. The neighbours will never accept it played at the power one gets in the Royal Albert Hall.

[Ariosto]

Would you rate his opinion as more significant than soloists like Bashmet, Imai and Zimmerman?

Don't forget that Bashmet, Imai and Zimmerman had a vested interest - they were paid for playing it, or recording it.

That does mean they necessarily liked the work.

Or have you actually asked them? Next time - or if - I bump into one of them I'll ask them. (I did bump into Imai backstage at the Wigmore 'all a few months ago).

[Biffo]

The first version I ever heard (ca.1969) was William Primrose and Munch/Boston SO, borrowed from a record library. The first version I bought was the Menuhin/Davis one, only to be promptly told that Menuhin's contribution was 'very poor'; poor or not I still liked it. However, I always thought that the Finale was a bit of a let down. This didn't change until I heard the work live - Davis and the LSO, I've forgotten the soloist but it may have been Imai - where the Finale came off brilliantly. Nowadays I favour the Gardiner performance but have to admit I don't listen to the work as often as the Symphonie fantastique or Romeo et Juliette.

[Barbirollians]

I see that IGI of this parish has rather damned Harold with faint praise in his review of Lawrence Power's recent account with Andrew Litton ( I think)

Leaving aside that for repertory works I would rather here the opinion of someone who likes the work in a written review- I was sent back to listen to the Menuhin/Davis account from 1963 . All that did was remind me how much I like the work and its extraordinarily early Romanticism and I cannot understand who suggested that Menuhin's playing is very poor - it has great character and brings off that Harold as observer context to a tee. The fire of a young Colin Davis too . As Deryck Cooke said in his Gramophone review in Aug 1963 - an absolute winner .