LSO Live LSO Live LSO Live captures exceptional LSO Live témoigne de LSO Live fängt unter performances from the finest concerts d’exception, donnés Einsatz der neuesten High- musicians using the latest par les musiciens les plus Density-Aufnahmetechnik high-density recording remarquables et restitués außerordentliche technology. The result? grâce aux techniques les plus Darbietungen der besten Sensational sound quality modernes de l’enregistrement Musiker ein. Das Ergebnis? and definitive interpretations haute-définition. La qualité Sensationelle Klangqualität Berlioz combined with the energy sonore impressionnante und maßgebliche and emotion that you can entourant ces interprétations Interpretationen, gepaart mit Roméo et Juliette only experience live in the d’anthologie se double de der Energie und Gefühlstiefe, concert hall. LSO Live lets l’énergie et de l’émotion die man nur live im SIR COLIN DAVIS everyone, everywhere, feel que seuls les concerts en Konzertsaal erleben kann. the excitement in the world’s direct peuvent offrir. LSO Live LSO Live lässt jedermann London Symphony Orchestra greatest music. For more permet à chacun, en toute an der aufregendsten, Daniela Barcellona information visit circonstance, de vivre cette herrlichsten Musik dieser Welt www.lso.co.uk passion intense au travers teilhaben. Wenn Sie mehr Kenneth Tarver des plus grandes oeuvres erfahren möchten, schauen Orlin Anastassov du répertoire. Sie bei uns herein: London Symphony Chorus Pour plus d’informations, www.lso.co.uk rendez vous sur le site www.lso.co.uk 2CD HECTOR BERLIOZ (1803–69) Berlioz Roméo et Juliette Roméo et Juliette Symphonie dramatique CD 1 62’23” 1 I INTRODUCTION COMBATS – TUMULTE – INTERVENTION DU PRINCE 4’23” PROLOGUE 2 ‘D’ANCIENNES HAINES ENDORMIES’ (Contralto solo; Choeur) 5’11” 3 STROPHES ‘PREMIERS TRANSPORTS QUE NUL N’OUBLIE!’ (Contralto solo) 5’21” 4 RÉCITATIF ET SCHERZETTO ‘C’EST LUI!’ (Ténor solo; Choeur) 3’26” 5 II ROMÉO SEUL – TRISTESSE – CONCERT ET BAL – GRANDE FÊTE CHEZ CAPULET 13’35” 6 III SCÈNE D’AMOUR NUIT SEREINE – LE JARDIN DE CAPULET SILENCIEUX ET DÉSERT 20’22” 7 IV LA REINE MAB, OU LA FÉE DES SONGES (SCHERZO) 7’54” CD 2 36’42” 1 V CONVOI FUNÈBRE DE JULIETTE 9’40” 2 VI ROMÉO AU TOMBEAU DES CAPULETS INVOCATION – RÉVEIL DE JULIETTE 8’37” VII FINAL LA FOULE ACCOURT AU CIMETIÈRE – RIXE DES CAPULETS ET DES MONTAGUES RÉCITATIF ET AIR DU PÈRE LAURENCE. SERMENT DE RÉCONCILIATION 3 ‘QUOI! ROMÉO DE RETOUR!’ (Choeur) RÉCITATIF ‘JE VAIS DÉVOILER LE MYSTÈRE’ (Le père Laurence) 4’16” 4 AIR ‘PAUVRES ENFANTS QUE JE PLEURE’ (Le père Laurence) 8’40” 5 SERMENT ‘JUREZ DONC, PAR L’AUGUSTE SYMBOLE’ (Le père Laurence; Choeur) 1’13” 3 HECTOR BERLIOZ (1803–69) Berlioz Roméo et Juliette Roméo et Juliette Symphonie dramatique CD 1 62’23” 1 I INTRODUCTION COMBATS – TUMULTE – INTERVENTION DU PRINCE 4’23” PROLOGUE 2 ‘D’ANCIENNES HAINES ENDORMIES’ (Contralto solo; Choeur) 5’11” 3 STROPHES ‘PREMIERS TRANSPORTS QUE NUL N’OUBLIE!’ (Contralto solo) 5’21” 4 RÉCITATIF ET SCHERZETTO ‘C’EST LUI!’ (Ténor solo; Choeur) 3’26” 5 II ROMÉO SEUL – TRISTESSE – CONCERT ET BAL – GRANDE FÊTE CHEZ CAPULET 13’35” 6 III SCÈNE D’AMOUR NUIT SEREINE – LE JARDIN DE CAPULET SILENCIEUX ET DÉSERT 20’22” 7 IV LA REINE MAB, OU LA FÉE DES SONGES (SCHERZO) 7’54” CD 2 36’42” 1 V CONVOI FUNÈBRE DE JULIETTE 9’40” 2 VI ROMÉO AU TOMBEAU DES CAPULETS INVOCATION – RÉVEIL DE JULIETTE 8’37” VII FINAL LA FOULE ACCOURT AU CIMETIÈRE – RIXE DES CAPULETS ET DES MONTAGUES RÉCITATIF ET AIR DU PÈRE LAURENCE. SERMENT DE RÉCONCILIATION 3 ‘QUOI! ROMÉO DE RETOUR!’ (Choeur) RÉCITATIF ‘JE VAIS DÉVOILER LE MYSTÈRE’ (Le père Laurence) 4’16” 4 AIR ‘PAUVRES ENFANTS QUE JE PLEURE’ (Le père Laurence) 8’40” 5 SERMENT ‘JUREZ DONC, PAR L’AUGUSTE SYMBOLE’ (Le père Laurence; Choeur) 1’13” 3 LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BERLIOZ AND SHAKESPEARE La mort de Cléopâtre, and writing a cantata that responds to each change of emotion with an almost SIR COLIN DAVIS CONDUCTOR Shakespearean violence. To make his intentions per- Daniela Barcellona mezzo-soprano fectly clear he headed ‘Cleopatra’s invocation’ with a quotation from Romeo and Juliet (‘How if, when I Kenneth Tarver tenor am laid into the tomb …’), and when reproached for Berlioz’s encounter with Shakespeare in 1827 had Orlin Anastassov bass not writing ‘soothing’ music, gave the splendid reply: an enormous influence on almost every aspect of ‘Sir, it’s a little difficult to write soothing music for his music. Despite his almost total ignorance of the an Egyptian queen who has been bitten by a poison- London Symphony Chorus English language he found himself swept up in a new ous snake and is dying a painful death in an agony dramatic world, with characters and subjects more Stephen Westrop chorus director of remorse.’ vividly alive than anything he had so far encountered. Janine Reiss language coach/music assistant As Berlioz well knew, most of Shakespeare’s plays Shakespeare contradicted everything that the RECORDED LIVE AT THE BARBICAN CENTRE, 11 & 13 january 2000 were written for performance in broad daylight, and venerable French dramatic tradition represented. Producer James Mallinson Sound engineer Tony Faulkner with minimal props or scenery. The freezing battle- Instead of proportion, good taste, and respect for ments of Elsinore at night, the sun-baked streets the Classical unities of time, place and action here of Verona and the bleak landscapes of Macbeth or was a dramatic art that encompassed wide expanses Lear are all conjured up in the words. Berlioz made of time and place, with strange excursions and sub- very little use of Shakespeare’s actual words, realis- plots and a reckless mixture of genres. The introduc- ing the pointlessness of any attempt simply to ‘set tion into tragedy of such characters as the Porter Shakespeare to music’. He seized instead on the in Macbeth or the Gravedigger in Hamlet appealed irresistibly to Berlioz’s sense of Romantic irony; and openness of form, the variety of scene and character here, too, was a range of human behaviour – from and the range of emotion to give his music an original the most passionate love to the vilest cruelty, from dramatic shape whose strength lies in its very avoid- the sharpest wit to the most complacent stupidity – ance of literalism. If circumstances had been more that both reflected and stimulated his own turbulent favourable he might have written an opera on one poetic imagination. of the great tragedies, but as it is, he composed only two large-scale Shakespearean works, the dramatic Even before he composed anything directly based symphony Roméo et Juliette and the opera Béatrice on Shakespeare, much of Berlioz’s early music shows et Bénédict, based on Much Ado About Nothing. his dramatic influence. Each of the Eight Scenes from In addition to these, there are smaller-scale works Faust (1828–9) bears an epigraph from Shakespeare; based on The Tempest, King Lear and Hamlet. But and later that year he virtually threw away his the spirit of Shakespeare can be found in almost chances of winning the Prix de Rome by ignoring everything Berlioz composed, from the passions and the stilted, academic form of the competition text, dramas of the Symphonie fantastique and Harold in 4 5 LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BERLIOZ AND SHAKESPEARE La mort de Cléopâtre, and writing a cantata that responds to each change of emotion with an almost SIR COLIN DAVIS CONDUCTOR Shakespearean violence. To make his intentions per- Daniela Barcellona mezzo-soprano fectly clear he headed ‘Cleopatra’s invocation’ with a quotation from Romeo and Juliet (‘How if, when I Kenneth Tarver tenor am laid into the tomb …’), and when reproached for Berlioz’s encounter with Shakespeare in 1827 had Orlin Anastassov bass not writing ‘soothing’ music, gave the splendid reply: an enormous influence on almost every aspect of ‘Sir, it’s a little difficult to write soothing music for his music. Despite his almost total ignorance of the an Egyptian queen who has been bitten by a poison- London Symphony Chorus English language he found himself swept up in a new ous snake and is dying a painful death in an agony dramatic world, with characters and subjects more Stephen Westrop chorus director of remorse.’ vividly alive than anything he had so far encountered. Janine Reiss language coach/music assistant As Berlioz well knew, most of Shakespeare’s plays Shakespeare contradicted everything that the RECORDED LIVE AT THE BARBICAN CENTRE, 11 & 13 january 2000 were written for performance in broad daylight, and venerable French dramatic tradition represented. Producer James Mallinson Sound engineer Tony Faulkner with minimal props or scenery. The freezing battle- Instead of proportion, good taste, and respect for ments of Elsinore at night, the sun-baked streets the Classical unities of time, place and action here of Verona and the bleak landscapes of Macbeth or was a dramatic art that encompassed wide expanses Lear are all conjured up in the words. Berlioz made of time and place, with strange excursions and sub- very little use of Shakespeare’s actual words, realis- plots and a reckless mixture of genres. The introduc- ing the pointlessness of any attempt simply to ‘set tion into tragedy of such characters as the Porter Shakespeare to music’. He seized instead on the in Macbeth or the Gravedigger in Hamlet appealed irresistibly to Berlioz’s sense of Romantic irony; and openness of form, the variety of scene and character here, too, was a range of human behaviour – from and the range of emotion to give his music an original the most passionate love to the vilest cruelty, from dramatic shape whose strength lies in its very avoid- the sharpest wit to the most complacent stupidity – ance of literalism.