Composer Hector Berlioz set new goals for his music in the two works presented on this new CD:
In Les Nuits d’été, Berlioz pioneered, well before Mahler and Ravel, a song cycle for voice and orchestra.
In Harold in Italy, scored for large orchestra and solo viola, he experimented with the symphonic genre.
These period-instrument performances by Les Siècles, led by François-Xavier Roth with violist Tabea Zimmermann, also feature Stéphane Degout in the vocal cycle, heard here in the composer’s own version for baritone.
Tabea Zimmermann is one of my favorite violists. Here she is in an exerpt from the Bartok Viola Concerto:
