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Berlioz: Harold in Italy - Paganini: Sonata per la Grand Viola e Orchestra

8/2/2011, 8 Tracks, 1:04:36

Featuring

  • Vladimir Ashkenazy
  • David Aaron Carpenter
  • Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
  • Hector Berlioz
  • Niccolò Paganini

Did you know?

1/7

Composer's Artistic Vision

Berlioz intended the solo viola in Harold in Italy to act like a character, a melancholy dreamer in the style of Byron's Childe Harold, retaining the same character throughout the orchestral scenes.

Source: Booklet

Composer Biography

Nicolò Paganini, a Genoese violinist, was so virtuosic that some suspected him of being in league with the Devil.

Source: Booklet

Interpretation

For this recording, David Aaron Carpenter, the violist, reinstated virtuoso passages that Berlioz had originally written for Paganini in Harold in Italy but later cut.

Source: Booklet

Performer Biography

David Aaron Carpenter, the violist on this album, plays on a Michele Deconet viola from Venice, made in 1766, known as the 'Ex-Hamma.'

Source: Booklet

Composition History

The seeds for Berlioz's Harold in Italy were sown after he won the Prix de Rome in 1830 and traveled through Italy with Lord Byron's poems.

Source: Booklet

Notable Performances

When Paganini heard Harold in Italy in 1838, he was so moved that he sent Berlioz 20,000 francs, with a note stating, 'Beethoven being dead, only Berlioz could make him live again.'

Source: Booklet

Composition History

Paganini commissioned Berlioz to write a work for a magnificent 1731 Stradivari viola he had been lent, which eventually became Harold in Italy.

Source: Booklet

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