Berlioz: Harold en Italie

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

Davis and his production team have worked hard to keep James Ehnes's quite ravishingly beautiful playing in focus..It sounds as if Davis sees the work as more lyrical and Romantic...than as a... — Gramophone Magazine, July 2015 More…

Release Date: 5th May 2015
Catalogue No: CHSA5155
Label: Chandos
Length: 63 minutes

Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2015

In stock

Usually despatched within 1 working day

This release includes a digital booklet

Chandos - Downloads at MP3 Prices

Special offer ends: 22/05/2024

Berlioz: Rob Roy Overture

Work length13:24

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis
Recorded: 1 August 2014
Recording Venue: Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Berlioz: Reverie et Caprice, Op. 8

Work length8:16

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

James Ehnes (violin)
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis
Recorded: 1 August 2014
Recording Venue: Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Berlioz: Harold en Italie, Op. 16

Work length42:16

$10.00

$12.90

$17.50

James Ehnes (viola)
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis
Recorded: 1 August 2014
Recording Venue: Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

I. Harold aux Montagnes. Scenes de melancolie, de bonheur et de joie: Adagio

Track length15:27

$4.00

$5.15

$7.00

II. Marche de pelerins chantant la priere du soir: Allegretto

Track length7:49

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

III. Serenade d'un montagnard des Abruzzes a sa maitresse: Allegro assai

Track length6:26

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

IV. Orgie de brigands. Souvenirs des scenes precedentes: Allegro frenetico

Track length12:34

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

About
Reviews
Explore

About

Recording of the Week, James Ehnes performs works for violin and viola by Franck, Strauss, and Berlioz

27th April 2015

James listens to two new discs featuring James Ehnes on the violin and viola.

The virtuosic and nine-times Juno-winning Canadian James Ehnes is centre stage in a new recording of orchestral works by Berlioz, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. This recording follows an extraordinarily rare concert in November 2014 with the same forces, in which James Ehnes played two Stradivarius, respectively a viola in the solo part of Harold en Italie – ‘symphony with a principal viola part’ in Berlioz’s words – and a violin for the solo in Rêverie et Caprice, both of which feature here.

Berlioz was never ashamed to recycle his music from one work to another, especially when the earlier work had been rejected by the public or by the composer himself. In 1834, Paganini asked Berlioz for a work in which he could display his power on a fine Stradivarius viola. Berlioz then composed the four-movement symphony Harold en Italie, incorporating passages from the Rob-Roy ouverture which he had recently rejected.

Similarly, Rêverie et Caprice was the form eventually given to an aria from the opera Benvenuto Cellini, unceremoniously booed in Paris in 1838. Berlioz transformed it into a violin solo piece three years later. It is the only piece Berlioz ever wrote for solo violin.

Reviews

July 2015

Davis and his production team have worked hard to keep James Ehnes's quite ravishingly beautiful playing in focus..It sounds as if Davis sees the work as more lyrical and Romantic...than as a sequel to the experimentation of the Fantastique...he sets his soloist off well and gives worthwhile accounts of the shorter pieces.

13th May 2015

Ehnes’s viola-playing is warm and expansive, but it is in the relatively compact Rêverie et Caprice that he is at his graceful best, gliding through mercurial moodswings and maintaining a notably lyrical line.

3rd May 2015

[Ehnes] is the protagonist in this all-Berlioz programme, but the disc is equally distinguished by the lucid, exhilarating, smoothly contoured playing of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under that experienced Berliozian Sir Andrew Davis.

Offer,Berlioz: Harold en Italie

SACD

Downloads

Contents

Recording of the Week, James Ehnes performs works for violin and viola by Franck, Strauss, and Berlioz

Download queue