The performance--which features today's foremost Berlioz interpreters--marks
WNYC's debut broadcast from the NJPAC, the state-of-the-art performing arts
facility in the heart of downtown Newark, NJ that opened to much acclaim in
October 1997. It is also the first-ever live broadcast of the LSO in
New York by a New York radio station. John Schaefer will host the broadcast.
Program
Details: Wednesday, March 5 at 7:30pm
- London Symphony Orchestra
- Sir Colin Davis, conductor
- Paul Silverthorne, viola
- Hector Berlioz: Harold in Italy
- Hector Berlioz: Romeo et Juliette Dramatic Symphony, Op. 17 (excerpts)
Harold in Italy is described as a "symphony" but it began
its life as a concerto. It was commissioned in 1834 by Paganini, who wanted
a work to show off his newly acquired Stradivarius viola. At that time Berlioz
was obsessed with Byron, and with his epic poem "Childe Harold" in
particular, and was determined to write a musical impression of the archetypal
romantic hero. While Berlioz's Harold turned out to be a major four-movement
work of glowing warmth, drama, and melodic richness, Paganini never played it,
deeming the solo part unworthy of his prodigious virtuosity. By turns melancholic,
earthy and dazzling, Harold captures the Italy of Berlioz's vivid imagination
with an impressive command of color and atmosphere.
Romeo et Juliette was composed in 1837 and revised and published a decade
later. Berlioz was one of many French Romantic artists who fell under the spell
of Shakespeare's works when they were presented in the late 1820s in Paris.
Unlike operatic versions by Charles Gounod or Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story)
Berlioz only wanted instrumental music because he felt that words would be too
limiting in telling the tragic love story. The ambitious, four-part work expresses
Shakespeare's tragedy with plenty of lush and sweeping music.
Sir
Colin Davis's now-legendary association with the music of Hector Berlioz
began more than five decades ago, when, in 1951, he played the clarinet in a
performance of the second part of the composer's L'enfance du Christ. His reputation
as the leading Berlioz interpreter of our time grew from numerous live performances
he conducted with the world's leading orchestras beginning in the late 1950s.
Together with the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin gave the world definitive
recordings of Berlioz's orchestral, dramatic, operatic and sacred works, at
first in the 1960s and 1970s for Philips Classics, and, most recently, in a
series of award-winning recordings for the orchestra's LSO Live label. Sir Colin's
Berlioz recordings are consistently top choices in both the Gramophone Classical
Good CD Guide and the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs. His most recent offering
in the series of LSO Live recordings, the epic Les Troyens, was a multiple Grammy
winner and a Gramophone Award Winner in 2002.
Berlioz Resources: