San Francisco Symphony

Harold en Italie - Les Nuits D'ete San Francisco Symphony

Berlioz the pioneer. A new aesthetic calls for new forms: such is the challenge the composer set for himself in the two works presented here. 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 periodinstrument 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. File under: out of the ordinary.