Berlioz: Excerpt from Romeo et Juliette and Les Troyens. San Diego Master Chorale and Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yoav Talmi – Naxos 8.553195 (79 minutes).
Perhaps the greatest French composer of all time, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is still the subject of debate and admiration. He was certainly a man with a mission, and his music is not only revolutionary but also immensely exciting, colourful, dramatic and rhythmically and harmonically daring.
Berlioz illuminated every aspect of the Romantic era and had the genius to transform great literary works into compelling musical ones, full of invention and instrumental sounds of every sort interspersed with a tinge of melancholy.
The excerpts on this disc are overwhelmingly beautiful, and amply demonstrate the astonishing mastery of orchestration and narrative power of the composer that leave one spellbound. Romeo et Juliette, a dramatic symphony for soloists, chorus and orchestra, was composed in 1839, and was written with Paganini’s help, who provided the funds for Berlioz to realise his artistic goal. It is in seven parts and embodies all the salient episodes of Shakespeare’s play.
At four-and-a-half hours, Les Troyens is to Berlioz what Götterdämmerung is to Wagner.
In February, 1853, Berlioz visited Liszt at Weimar and confided that he had been tinkering with the idea of writing a gigantic opera based on Virgil’s Aeneid. His wish was to write both words and music, but the huge undertaking made Berlioz think twice, and the start of the project was repeatedly postponed.
Notwithstanding all this hesitation, the opera was completed in 1857 and ready for production.
The Paris premiere on November 4, 1863, was a complete fiasco. Not only was the performance flawed and ill-rehearsed but its enormous length, huge orchestra and corps de ballet, tremendous staging and scenery requirements all led to its failure.
The work was never completely staged during Berlioz’s lifetime and was almost totally forgotten until 1957, when Rafael Kubelik revived it, albeit with cuts and an English version.
Since then, Les Troyens has featured in practically all the great opera theatres of the world.
This fine issue is just a taster, but impressive enough to give the listener just the right picture of the scope and sweep of these mammoth masterpieces.
Unmissable stuff in excellent sound and presentation, but go for the complete versions. You will certainly be caught up in a world of inexplicable beauty.
Liszt: Dante Sonata and Dante Symphony for two pianos. Vittorio Bresciani and Francesco Nicolosi, pianos – Naxos 8.570516 (60 minutes).
Writer, innovator, revolutionary, womaniser, cleric, and above all, composer, Franz Liszt was also a much travelled pianist who mesmerised audiences all over Europe with his playing.
Indeed, some reports testify to women swooning with adulation during his concerts, and he was held in high esteem by practically every sector of society, except, of course, by those opposed to change.
Fascinated by what he experienced in his travels, particularly in Italy, Liszt wrote a series of compositions entitled Années de pélerinage, in which he describes not only the natural beauties of the country, but also lauds its artistic virtues.
The Dante Sonata started as a fragment in 1839. Duly performed in Vienna in December that year, it was described by critics as something of an improvisation inspired by a reading of La Divina Commedia. Entitled Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata, it was reworked by Liszt during his Weimar years (1848-1861), and the composer included it in the Années series dedicated to Italy.
Daring, ominous and at times fiendishly difficult to bring off, the piece takes as its subject the Inferno, and Liszt’s inspiration is consistently vivid in its description of the torments of the damned.
The 1856 Dante Symphony is a different proposition. It took Liszt almost five years to complete but the work had a disastrous premiere in Dresden a year later, and it was only after the composer transcribed it for two pianos that the symphony started to find acceptance.
The piece consists of two long movements: Inferno and Purgatorio, and a short final section entitled Magnificat for chorus and orchestra. One may ask why Liszt did not end with Il Paradiso? The answer is in the composer’s own admission that he found it impossible to describe in musical terms the “Beatific Vision” in Paradise, and so he decided on this choral ending.
The symphony is full of telling imagery and exciting passages, but it remains one of Liszt’s uneven orchestral pieces and its performances are rare. Indeed, the two-piano version gives the work a more homogeneous structure, and the many deft orchestral touches found in the original score come out with more clarity and conviction.
This disc not only displays some fine and dashing pianism, but also showcases the inexhaustible audacity and genius of a composer whose influence is still working its magic to this day. Despite the lean annotations, this is a wholly recommendable issue. Sound and presentation are first-rate.
These CDs were made available for review by D’Amato Record Shop of 98, St John Street, Valletta.