Berlioz, Hector (1803 - 69)

[vinteuil]

.

... I think Berlioz benefits particularly from a HIPP approach (Norrington, McCreesh, Gardiner, Minkowski, Roth... ), but I do also enjoy some of the old-school practitioners - Munch, and Monteux in Roméo & Juliette. Sadly, for all his importance in the Berlioz revival, I find Davis dull.

For anyone wanting to get to know Berlioz I think the Inbal box is great -

http://amzn.eu/fify6wI

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

.For anyone wanting to get to know Berlioz I think the Inbal box is great -

http://amzn.eu/fify6wI

- great performances, superbly recorded; a real bargain. (Just a pity an opportunity to record a Nuits d'Ete with Maria Ewing was missed - she is gorgeous in Faust.)

[Richard Barrett]

Sadly, for all his importance in the Berlioz revival, I find Davis dull.

I'm glad to see you say that because it's always been my feeling too. I think that the problem is that to some extent he waters down the more radical qualities of the music (especially the sound of the orchestra) in the interests of making it more accessible.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Like many (I suppose) I started with Roman Carnival and Symphonie Fantastique in my teens and it took me a long time to understand the middle movement of the latter!

Not helped by those recordings that put a side change 2/3 through! It is an astonishing movement, isn't it - a gradual drawing together of elements towards a a theme: quite wonderful. (The nearest equivalent I can think of is the third Movement of Sibelius #4.)

Soon after my 21st birthday, I found myself in the chorus singing The Trojans under Colin Davis at the RFH. It was one of the great musical experiences of my life, and I have been an unequivocal Berlioz admirer ever since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5i1cJIwE7M

... I can see (if not share) why Davis' recordings might not find favour with listeners, but his two recordings of Les Troyens still dazzle my imagination. (His last recording of the Requiem is pretty damn fine, too.)

[rauschwerk]

It's a pity that his SF is so popular, when there are other works that he wrote, which are equally as good.

I can't agree. The SF is a great masterpiece, quite original in both conception and execution, formally most satisfying and technically polished. It fully deserves its popularity. I find the Requiem excellent as well, but the scale of the piece of course precludes frequent performance or recording.

[vinteuil]

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... the last time I was driving down to Provence I made a point of going by way of La Côte-Saint-André - it's a little out of the way, but I do recommend it as a détour for addicted berliozophiles

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_C%C3%B4te-Saint-Andr%C3%A9

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I can't agree. The SF is a great masterpiece, quite original in both conception and execution, formally most satisfying and technically polished. It fully deserves its popularity.

As I read it, Bbm wasn't saying that the SF doesn't deserve its popularity, but that it is a shame that none of Berlioz' equally great, original and satisfying other works haven't found a similar place in general affection.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

.

... the last time I was driving down to Provence I made a point of going by way of La Côte-Saint-André - it's a little out of the way, but I do recommend it as a détour for addicted berliozophiles

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_C%C...int-Andr%C3%A9

On the list! (Are pink slippers required?)

[Richard Tarleton]

... I can see (if not share) why Davis' recordings might not find favour with listeners, but his two recordings of Les Troyens still dazzle my imagination. (His last recording of the Requiem is pretty damn fine, too.)

As they do mine, and I was lucky enough to see him conduct it in the ROH (1972) and the Barbican. At the Barbican, it was originally to have been Olga Borodina, but she pulled out and everyone else was shuffled up one - Petra Lang to a magnificent Cassandra, and Michelle deYoung from Cassandra to Dido - and Toby Spence got his big break on the night, stepping up to Hylas at the last moment through illness, and is on the discs.

The first recording - Cassandra a bit ropey perhaps, but Vickers and Veasey just superb. As for the live performance (I think I saw the first revival), Veasey was relegated a little unfairly to Cassandra to make room for Janet Baker but that was a superb performance as well, as far as I can remember, bearing in mind that was my first live Berlioz tho' I knew the SF and Harold well by then. In those days a seat in the stalls at Covent Garden was quite manageable. I'd also put in a word for Beatrice and Benedict - the duet Nuit paisable et sereine is one of my favourite Berlioz moments.

This thread has prompted me to re-read the Memoirs, last read in the 1970s, since when of course I've read the Cairns biog. Interested not least to remind myself of his side of the Liszt story, having also read Alan Walker, who leaves one feeling a bit disappointed in Berlioz, one of the two composers on whose music Liszt devoted most of his time and resources in promoting. Neither Berlioz nor Wagner ever included a note of Liszt in their programmes - "Lacking his artistic magnanimity, they were not really interested in modern music as such, only in that part of it represented by Berlioz or Wagner respectively" (Vol ll, p. 299, "Liszt the Conductor").

Walker has an interesting footnote (same chapter, p. 271) - Liszt advised other conductors strongly against putting on Berlioz works (as he did re his own, and Wagner's), until they were in a position to do them really well. Though it seems obvious today, AW writes,

...it is worth reflecting that there are some composers and some works which depend far less than others on a perfect performance for their full effect. Bad performances, after all, did not prevent Beethoven's genius from declaring itself, but they held back the full recognition of Berlioz for half a century. His music, like Liszt's, is not performer-proof. This distinction, between good music whose goodness reveals bad players, and bad players whose badness obscures good music, was recognised early by Liszt - perhaps because the reputation of his own music suffered when the distinction was blurred.

[vinteuil]

... pink slippers

'His mother’s father lived at Meylan, a little village not far from. Grenoble, and there, in this picturesque valley, the family used to spend a part of each summer. Above Meylan, in a crevice of the mountain, stood a white house amid its vineyards and gardens. It was the home of Mme. Gautier and her two nieces, of whom the younger was called Estelle. When the boy Hector saw her for the first time, he was twelve, a shy, retiring little fellow. Estelle was just eighteen, tall, graceful, with beautiful dusky hair and large soulful eyes. Most wonderful of all, with her simple white gown, she wore pink slippers. The shy boy of twelve fell in desperate love with this white robed apparition in pink slippers. He says himself :

“Never do I recall Estelle, but with the flash of her large dark eyes comes the twinkle of her dainty pink shoes. To say I loved her comprises everything. I was wretched, dumb, despairing. By night I suffered agonies—by day I wandered alone through the fields of Indian corn, or, like a wounded bird, sought the deepest recesses of my grandfather’s orchard.

“One evening there was a party at Mme. Gautier’s and various games were played. In one of them I was told to choose first. But I dared not, my heart-beats choked me. Estelle, smiling, caught my hand, saying: ‘Come, I will begin; I choose Monsieur Hector.’ But, ah, she laughed !

“I was thirteen when we parted. I was thirty when, returning from Italy, I passed through this district, so filled with early memories. My eyes filled at sight of the white house: I loved her still. On reaching my old home I learned she was married!” '

[vinteuil]

.

... La Côte-Saint-André

... birthplace too, I find, of this chappie - of whom I think we should know more :

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Davaux

- 25 string quartets, 13 symphonies concertantes ...

- and, in 1784 - thirty years before Maelzel - inventing a precursor of the metronome...







.

[cloughie]

I can't agree. The SF is a great masterpiece, quite original in both conception and execution, formally most satisfying and technically polished. It fully deserves its popularity.

I agree, and for me it has survived the test of any composition, in that I love it now as much as when I first got to know it 55 or so years ago via a battered mono Philips LP by the BPO and Van Otterloo.

[Bryn]

Not helped by those recordings that put a side change 2/3 through! It is an astonishing movement, isn't it - a gradual drawing together of elements towards a a theme: quite wonderful. (The nearest equivalent I can think of is the third Movement of Sibelius #4.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5i1cJIwE7M

... I can see (if not share) why Davis' recordings might not find favour with listeners, but his two recordings of Les Troyens still dazzle my imagination. (His last recording of the Requiem is pretty damn fine, too.)

Very much with you re.Colin Davis's Berlioz. He did so very much to re-establish the reputation of HB's music in this country.

[cloughie]

Not helped by those recordings that put a side change 2/3 through!

Most did back then, and it was often the case for the 3rd movt of Beethoven 9 and Mahler 1 and I remember trying to put them on cassette and trying to minimise the join. 30 plus years on since the CD revolution we tend to forget these things - all the Stravinsky Ballets, Strauss Symphonic Poems and other works that needed continuous play suffered the side-break.

[Serial_Apologist]

Most did back then, and it was often the case for the 3rd movt of Beethoven 9 and Mahler 1 and I remember trying to put them on cassette and trying to minimise the join. 30 plus years on since the CD revolution we tend to forget these things - all the Stravinsky Ballets, Strauss Symphonic Poems and other works that needed continuous play suffered the side-break.

Oh I thought they were actually composed that way!

(I'll get me coat...)