Berlioz

From the start, the Gazette musicale (as it was first called) was marked by the colourful character of its founder, the music publisher Maurice Schlesinger (Flaubert's model for Jacques Arnoux in L'Education sentimentale), and by the wit and passion of its primary contributor during the first decade, Hector Berlioz. The Gazette musicale was founded, moreover, in direct rivalry with a journal of very different character, the Revue musicale, which from 1827 to 1835 afforded the music historian, philosopher, biographer and critic Francois-Joseph Fetis a stage for solo performance.

Berlioz's innovative ideas about grand opera--a principally Parisian phenomenon--are indebted not only to Auber and Meyerbeer but also to Gluck, whose operas were originally intended and also staged for Paris (in 1862 Berlioz himself mounted a celebrated production of Orfeo).

By concentrating only on the Berlioz episode of Hanslick's life Payzant omitted to give any account of the impact of a wider array of literary and philosophical sources that might have contributed to the formation of Hanslick's intellectual position in On the Musically Beautiful.

It was a triumph for the orchestra - delicate, powerful, shimmering as required - and the CBSO Chorus, whether swaying drunkenly with Boidar Smiljanic's Brander, as sylphs, spirits or hurling Berlioz's made-up demonic language through cupped hands.

In her lilting Act II trio with d'Oustrac and Serbian mezzo Katarina Bradic (Ursule), the three blend gorgeously in some of Berlioz's most touching harmonies.

I should like to correct an unfortunate error that the book review editor introduced into my review of The Other Worlds of Hector Berlioz: Travels with the Orchestra, by Inge Van Rij in Notes 73, no.

The two concerts the symphony will do under the "lovea+ fate" rubric include Hector Berlioz's "Symphony Fantastique," composed in 1830, and a double-feature of Sergey Prokofiev's 1938 "Romeo and Juliet" ballet - with interlinking performances by actors from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival - and George Gershwin's opera, "Porgy and Bess," first performed in 1935.

Now the ENO has announced he is to return in 2014 to present Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, described as a "technically challenging" production about the life of the Florentine sculptor.

Rodgers explores how musical forms and programmatic scenarios are woven together, and situates Berlioz in the context of a broader interest in strophic instrumental forms and in incorporating lyrical structures into symphonic music.

Review TITLE: Orchestra of Opera North, Sunwook Kim (piano) VENUE: Huddersfield Town Hall The Piano Concerto No 1 in D Minor by Brahms was followed by the Symphonie fantastique of Berlioz.

In this latest journey into a paranoid future where surveillance and authoritarianism rule, choral chants signal communal uprising and Berlioz meets Bowie.

Monday night's Revolutionary Prom brought Berlioz, with his colourful, ingenious orchestration which always suits these forces.