Word: berlioz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...book, "Berlioz in London," Hector Berlioz mentions two princes from India who stirred London in 1851. One of them met 20-year-old H. P. Blavatsky in Hyde Park, and asked her if she would participate in a great work. She would, and did-bringing modern Theosophy to the world. Her successor, English reformer, Annie Besant, teamed up with Charles L. Leadbeater to continue the flow of occult revelations. Their work was crowned with the discovery of the returned Christ in the person of a 14-year-old boy named Krishnamurti. Leadbeater made the discovery clairvoyantly while watching, Krishnamurti frolick...
...statements. Thomas' performance lacked a certain reflective delicacy that might have made the work more of a requiem and less of a showpiece, but he clearly demonstrated that as a conductor he is thoroughly capable of reaching his performers in the grand style defined long ago by Hector Berlioz: "His inward fire warms them, his electric glow animates them, his form of impulse excites them...
...five disks, $29.90) Les Troyens turns out to be better than even its most extravagant admirers have claimed. Nor does it seem all that long: uncut, it runs a bit under four hours, shorter than either Die Meistersinger or Parsifal, roughly the length of Tristan und Isolde. It is Berlioz's greatest work, epic in scale, richness and power...
...incomprehensible that Les Troyens had to wait 112 years to be heard as Berlioz had written it. If it were not for the superlative skill and dogged determination of Conductor Colin Davis it might not have happened at all. For over a century, the French publishing house of Choudens owned the score but refused to release it. At one point, English Musicologists Cecil Gray and W.J. Turner even tried to hire the Parisian underworld to burglarize Choudens. The attempt failed. Fortunately, the Bibliotheque Nationale owned Berlioz's manuscripts. British Musicologist Hugh MacDonald began the immense job of deciphering them...
Cast in the old-fashioned molds of aria, duet, octet, chorus, etc., Les Troyens looks a bit archaic on paper. But in performance, the music churns with energy. Berlioz's restraint and sharp musical delineation of character are on a level with Mozart, Gluck and Wagner at their best...