Berlioz: Roméo Et Juliette

London Symphony Orchestra LSO Live Berlioz Roméo et Juliette Valery Gergiev Olga Borodina Kenneth Tarver Evgeny Nikitin Guildhall School Singers Simon Halsey, London Symphony Chorus London Symphony Orchestra Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) Page Index Roméo et Juliette, Op 17 (1839) 3 Track listing Valery Gergiev 5 English notes London Symphony Orchestra 7 French notes mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina 9 German notes tenor Kenneth Tarver 11 Libretto bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin 16 Conductor biography Guildhall School Singers 17 Soloist biographies chorus director Simon Halsey 20 Chorus director biography London Symphony Chorus 21 Chorus biography & personnel list 22 Orchestra personnel list 23 LSO biography Recorded live in DSD, 6 & 13 November 2013 at the Barbican, London James Mallinson producer Classic Sound Ltd recording, editing and mastering facilities Jonathan Stokes for Classic Sound Ltd balance engineer, audio editor, mixing and mastering Neil Hutchinson for Classic Sound Ltd recording engineer © 2016 London Symphony Orchestra, London UK P 2016 London Symphony Orchestra, London UK 2 Track Listing Track Disc 1 Total 57’06’’ Première Partie / Part One 1 No 1 Introduction : Combats – Tumulte – Intervention du Prince p16 4’40’’ 2 Prologue : Récitatif Chorale “D’anciennes haines endormies” p16 4’33’’ 3 Prologue : Strophes “Premiers transports que nul n’oublie!” p17 6’59’’ 4 Prologue : Récitatif et Scherzetto “Bientôt de Roméo” p18 2’59’’ Deuxième Partie / Part Two 5 No 2 Roméo seul – Tristesse – Bruit lointain de bal et de concert – p19 12’14’’ Grande Fête chez Capulet 6 No 3 Scène d’amour : Nuit sereine – Le Jardin de Capulet, silencieux et désert p19 17’49’’ “Ohé! Capulets, bonsoir!” – Les jeunes Capulets sortant de la fête, passent en chantant des réminiscences de la musique du bal 7 No 4 Scherzo : La Reine Mab, ou la Fée des Songes p20 7’52’’ 3 Disc 2 Total 33’19’’ Troisième Partie / Part Three 1 No 5 Convoi funèbre de Juliette “Jetez des fleurs pour la vierge expirée!” p20 9’26’’ 2 No 6 Roméo au tombeau des Capulets: Invocation – Réveil de Juliette p20 7’14’’ Joie délirante, désespoir, dernières angoisses et mort des deux amants 3 No 7 Final : La foule accourt au cimetière – Rixe des Capulets et des Montagus p20 3’53’’ “Quoi! Roméo de retour” – Récitatif du Père Laurence “Je vais dévoiler le mystère” 4 Final : Air du Père Laurence “Pauvres enfants que je pleure” p22 8’21’’ 5 Final : Serment de réconciliation “Jurez donc, par l’auguste symbole” p23 4’25’’ 4 Programme Notes Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) For Berlioz, listening to the Beethoven symphonies choking death; and, at the last, the solemn oath joint legacy of Shakespeare and Beethoven – Roméo et Juliette, Op 17 (1839) and studying the scores in the Conservatoire Library, sworn by the warring houses, too late, on the bodies precisely gauged. the sheer variety of their compositional procedures of their star-crossed children, to abjure the hatred Almost from the moment that the 23-year-old and the clearly distinct character of each work through which so much blood, so many years, were The fugal Introduction, depicting the feud of the Berlioz saw the English company’s performance reinforced the lessons of Shakespeare: continual shed’. Much of this will feature in the symphony two families, establishes the principle of dramatically of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Odéon reinvention of form in response to the demands of that Paganini’s princely gift – a cheque for 20,000 explicit orchestral music and then, using the bridge theatre in September 1827, ideas for some kind of the poetic material. Each of his three symphonies francs which relieved Berlioz of the heavy burden of instrumental recitative (as in Beethoven’s Ninth), musical response began to crowd into his mind. is cast in a different form, and adopts a different of debt – enabled him to write. crosses over into vocal music. Choral Prologue But the article in an English newspaper which later solution to the problem of communicating dramatic now states the argument, which choral Finale will reported that as he left the theatre he exclaimed, content: in the Fantastique a written programme, in The Formal Plan resolve, and prepares for the themes, dramatic and ‘I shall write my grandest symphony on the play’ Harold movement titles, in Roméo choral recitative, musical, to be treated in the core of the symphony could not have been more wrong. setting out – as in Shakespeare’s ‘Two houses, The work finally performed in the Conservatoire by the orchestra. In addition, the two least overtly both alike in dignity…’ – the action distilled in the Hall in November 1839 was the result of long and dramatic movements, the adagio (Love Scene) and Writing a symphony of any kind was the last thing movements that follow. careful consideration of ends and means. ‘Romeo the scherzo, are prefigured, the one in a contralto he would have been thinking of at that stage of and Juliet, Dramatic Symphony, with chorus, vocal solo celebrating the rapture of first love, the other his career. His musical education, since coming to The project occupied him a long time. In Italy, in solos, and prologue in chanted recitative, after in a scherzetto for tenor and semi-chorus which Paris from the provinces six years before – a boy 1831–32, he discusses with Mendelssohn a possible Shakespeare’s tragedy, dedicated to Nicolo Paganini’, introduces the mischievous Mab. At the end the of 17 who had never heard an orchestra – had orchestral scherzo on Queen Mab, and – under is its title. Berlioz’s later preface later has an ironic Finale brings the drama fully into the open in an been largely devoted to the operas and sacred the, to him, negative impact of Bellini’s Montecchi edge: ‘There will doubtless be no mistake as to the extended choral movement that culminates in the music of the French classical school. The crucial e Capuleti – imagines an ideal scenario for a genre of this work’. In fact there has been a great abjuring of the hatreds depicted orchestrally at the discovery of Beethoven, and of the symphony as dramatic work: ‘To begin, the dazzling ball at the deal. Yet (as the preface continues), ‘although voices outset. a major art-form, lay several months ahead. Capulets, where amid a whirling cloud of beauties are frequently employed, it is neither a concert opera young Montague first sets eyes on “sweet Juliet” nor a cantata but a choral symphony’. The use of voices The Revelation of Beethoven whose constant love will cost her her life; then the furious battles in the streets of Verona, the Nowadays Mahler’s multi-movement vocal-orchestral Throughout, voices are used enough to keep them Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette comes out of Beethoven “fiery Tybalt” presiding like the very spirit of rage constructions are accepted as symphonies, but before the listener’s attention, in preparation for almost as much as out of Shakespeare – out of and revenge,; the indescribable night scene on they were long disputed. (Their whole conception their full deployment. In the Love Scene the songs the revelation of the Beethovenian symphony at Juliet’s balcony, the lovers’ voices “like softest has been described by the composer Hugh Wood of revellers on their way home from the ball float the Conservatoire concerts in 1828: the symphony music to attending ears” uttering a love as pure as ‘profoundly Berliozian’.) In Berlioz’s symphony across the stillness of the Capulets’ garden. Two as a dramatic medium every bit as vivid and lofty and radiant as the smiling moon that shines its the balance between the symphonic and the movements later, in the Funeral Procession, the as opera, and the symphony orchestra as a vehicle benediction upon them; the dazzling Mercutio and narrative is exactly calculated (with the wordless Capulet chorus is heard. The use of chorus thus of unimagined expressive power and subtlety, of his sharp-tongued, fantastical humour; the naïve love scene at the heart of the work, structurally follows what Berlioz (in an essay on the Ninth infinite possibility. From that time on his aspirations old cackling nurse; the stately hermit, striving in and emotionally). The more one studies it the Symphony) called ‘the law of crescendo’. It also turn in a new direction, towards the dramatic vain to calm the storm of love and hate whose stronger its compositional grasp appears. So far works emotionally: having begun as onlookers, the concert work, culminating, twelve years after the tumult has carried even to his lowly cell; and then from being arbitrary – an awkward compromise voices become participants, just as the anonymous epiphany at the Odéon, in Roméo et Juliette. the catastrophe, extremes of ecstasy and despair between symphony and opera or oratorio – the contralto and the Mercutio-like tenor give way to contending for mastery, passion’s sighs turned to scheme is logical and the mixture of genres – the an actual person, the saintly Friar Laurence. At the 5 same time the two movements preceding the swell of the great extended melody which grows The 1840s were largely spent taking his music Finale take on an increasingly descriptive character, out of the questioning phrases of ‘Roméo seul’; abroad and establishing a reputation as one of the funeral dirge merging into an insistent bell-like the awesome unison of cor anglais, horn and four the leading composers and conductors of the day. tolling and the Tomb Scene taking the work still bassoons in Romeo’s invocation in the Capulets’ These years of travel produced much less music, nearer to narrative. In this way the fully dramatic tomb; the haunting beauty of Juliet’s funeral but in 1854 the success of L’enfance du Christ Finale evolves out of what has gone before.

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