Hector Berlioz

Overview - Recordings - Scores - Books - Links

Born: December 11, 1803, La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France
Died: March 8, 1869, Paris, France

Hector Berlioz's Symphonie funèbre et triomphale is the great 19th century symphony for band. Berlioz later added strings and chorus as performance options. Here we stick to the band versions, both with and without chorus. Even with this restriction, few pieces in the band repertoire have such widely different performances available on CD.

The first movement funeral march is marked "Moderato un poco lento," and a major interpretive choice is how much moderato vs. how much lento you want. Early recordings emphasized the lento aspects. Désiré Dondeyne's recording from the mid-1970s (now out of print) was the only band version available on CD for a long time, and took this movement very slowly at 21:40. Colin Davis took it at 17:27 in his pioneering orchestral recording from 1969. Timothy Reynish's new recording is in this tradition, taking 18:21 for the first movement. It is part of a great program of French Wind Band Classics including works by Milhaud, Schmitt, Saint-Saëns, and Bozza. Joseph Alessi does a beautiful job with the second-movement trombone recitative and aria, adapted from Berlioz's unfinished opera Les Francs-juges. One of the nice interpretive touches here is how well the trombone counter-melody in the first movement recapitulation is brought out, foreshadowing the second movement solo.

The Wallace Collection CD is a landmark in the recording history of this piece, taking the first movement much more moderato than lento at 13:27. Beyond the matter of tempo, the Wallace Collection performs the piece superbly, including Dudley Bright's solo trombone. On top of that, he includes historic wind music from the French Revolution by Gossec, Hyacinthe Jadin, Cherubini, and Lefèvre that is not available elsewhere, and uses the chorus in the finale. All we could want is a bit better choral phrasing as well as a little better sound (this is an early digital recording from the late 1980s). But that's nit-picking: this is one great CD.

Recordings

Works	Performers	Reviews	Stores
Symphonie funèbre et triomphale	Dudley Bright, trombone The Wallace Collection John Wallace	Corleonis	Tower Amazon
Symphonie funèbre et triomphale	Joseph Alessi, trombone Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra Timothy Reynish	Anderson North Corleonis	Tower Amazon
Symphonie funèbre et triomphale	Alessandro Castelli, trombone Valtellina Wind Orchestra Lorenzo Della Fonte	Corleonis	Amazon
Oraison funèbre	Christian Lindberg, trombone Kosei Wind Orchestra Chikiara Imamura		Tower Amazon

Scores

Books

Berlioz, Volume One: The Making of an Artist, 1803-1832 by David Cairns
Berlioz, Volume Two: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns
Memoirs by Hector Berlioz, translated by David Cairns