Canadian maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a regular collaborator with the esteemed Vienna Philharmonic since 2010, is making a comeback to the world-famous Salzburg Festival in 2024 to conduct a spectacular performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with them! This symphony, composed by a 26-year-old Berlioz who was captivated by actress Harriet Smithson, his future wife, depicts an artist haunted by an all-consuming love that evolves from innocence to horror, including opium-induced dreams and a sinister witches’ sabbath.
Paavo Järvi & Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
“When a conductor who is always in search of the ideal sound meets an orchestra that follows him with devotion at every stage and a virtuoso who transports us to other worlds with the truthfulness of his playing, extraordinary things can happen. This is what happened when Paavo Järvi and “his” Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich gave a guest performance with violist Antoine Tamestit at the Vienna Musikverein” (Kurier). The concert opens with Berlioz’s Harold en Italie, a dreamy, melancholy work in which Berlioz processed his wanderings in the Abruzzi. French violist Antoine Tamestit likes to experiment with new formats and seeks his way off the interpretive beaten track. Harold en Italie therefore seems tailor-made for him: as a symphony with solo viola, it was a highly innovative work in its time. The work is followed by Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1, in the version for orchestra by Arnold Schönberg. Brahms composed the piece in 1861 and it is known for its sweeping melodies and complex counterpoint.
Talking Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini
The absence of the work in the operatic repertoire is certainly due in part to its musical excesses: the work is so complex, richly detailed and prolifically imaginative that Berlioz’s contemporaries considered it unplayable and unsingable. This is resoundingly proven false in the 2007 Salzburg Festival production of director Philipp Stölzl, conductor Valery Gergiev and a high-caliber cast accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic and its chorus. Stölzl, above all, has poured his experience as director
of music videos (for Madonna, Mick Jagger and others), commercials and films into this project, termed ‘science fiction for Grand Opera’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung), ‘breathtaking’ (Der Standard), and ‘spectacularly successful’ (F.A.Z.).
Young People’s Concerts: Berlioz takes a trip
Awarded four Emmys and hailed by Variety as “a rare moment in the symbiosis of the arts and broadcasting,” Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts left their mark on television history. Aired on CBS from 1958 to 1972, these 53 one-hour programs were written and hosted by Leonard Bernstein. With the New York Philharmonic and guest artists providing the live music, these programs brought musical concepts and music history to life for generations of viewers. “Lectures accompanying music might not sound like the formula of a hit kids’ TV program, but Bernstein was the secret ingredient who made it work” (Variety). Balancing scholarship and showmanship, Maestro Bernstein brings the full range of his magnetic personality to play in these programs. And he succeeds in infecting viewers young and old, connoisseurs and the uninitiated, with his overwhelming love of music. Bernstein discusses what he describes as the “first psychedelic symphony,” Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique,” examining the concept of the “idée fixe” in music and illustrating this concept with excerpts from the first movement. Bernstein analyzes the music and discusses the storyline of the remaining movements, which are performed by the Philharmonic.
Gardiner conducts Berlioz and Elgar
The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France joins forces with conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner and violist Antoine Tamestit for a concert featuring Italy and putting two composers in the spotlight: Hector Berlioz and Edward Elgar. With Harolde en Italie, Hector Berlioz invokes transalpine landscapes. Shaped by the period when the composer was resident at the Villa Medici, this symphony in four parts gives pride of place to the viola, played here by Antoine Tamestit – “one of the two or three greatest current performers” (Diapason). In the South (Alassio), composed between 1903 and 1904 by Edward Elgar, is still about Italy, pastoral atmosphere and Byronic colours. Brilliantly complex, this work, written in record time, is one of the peaks of romantic music. Let us travel a little deeper into Edward Elgar’s melancholy with his Sospiri. This adagio for strings composed at the dawn of the First World War is captivating in its romanticism and passion.
Concert Monstre
Five hundred artists on stage is just what it takes to do justice to the grandeur and genius of Hector Berlioz. His Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, premiered at the Bastille, draws on this impressive cast of instrumental and vocal forces under the baton of François-Xavier Roth at the Philharmonie de Paris. Also to be heard are Berlioz’ works L’ impériale, Chant des chemins de fer and La Marseillaise in a breathtaking orchestration, sung with the participation of the audience. A gigantic and “outstanding concert” (ResMusica). PROGRAM: Grande Symphonie funèbre et triomphale; L’ impériale, Chant des chemins de fer, La Marseillaise
Berlioz, Requiem
In September 1975 Leonard Bernstein celebrated a triumphal return to Paris after a four-year absence, conducting the Orchestre National de France in two concerts. One featured exclusively works by Maurice Ravel, the other the Berlioz Requiem. Both concerts were recorded by Unitel. Bernstein had the good fortune to be able to conduct the monumental Requiem at the venue of its 1837 world premiere, the church or St. Louis des Invalides.
Les Troyens
Berlioz’ ‘Les Troyens’ from the Salzburg Festival 2000 belongs is one of the most acclaimed productions by legendary director Herbert Wernicke. The cast is also second to none: in the role of Cassandre and Didon is American singer Deborah Polaski, who is renowned as one of the greatest dramatic Mezzo-Sopranos of our century.
RCO: Antonio Pappano & Joyce DiDonato
Antonio Pappano conducts two works in which love leads to lunacy: Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique and Jake Heggie’s song cycle, Camille Claudel: Into the Fire, featuring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. Musical tales of boundless passion and madness come to life. Hector Berlioz explored his obsessive love in the Symphonie fantastique. Joyce DiDonato sings Into the Fire, Jake Heggie’s bittersweet song cycle about the French artist Camille Claudel, whose affair with her associate Auguste Rodin proved to be her undoing. Such a programme calls for a conductor who knows how to deliver drama in a perfectly measured way. Sir Antonio Pappano manages to lead the Concertgebouw Orchestra on this emotional roller coaster without going off the rails. PROGRAM Heggie: Camille Claudel – Into the Fire; Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique