Composers: Hector the Ferocious

"A lot of people have been rude about Hector Berlioz," says English Conductor Colin Davis, and he wishes they would quit. Alas, poor Berlioz has suffered more than his share. In 1829, when he was 25, he submitted his passionately theatrical piece for soprano and orchestra, Cléopâtre, to the Prix de Rome committee. It was rejected with a scolding from one of the judges, who said, "You refuse to write like everybody else. Even your rhythms are new. You would invent new modulations if such a thing were possible." The story goes that when Gioachino Rossini was shown Berlioz' score for the Symphonic Fantastique, he examined it for five minutes and said, "Thank goodness, this isn't music!" Recently Pierre Boulez complained, only half in jest, that Berlioz "has only got two chords."

That is not true, of course, but even if it were, it would not bother Davis. "It's the what of music that Berlioz is interested in, not the how," explains Davis. "He appeals to me because of his mixture of ferocity and tenderness. And by ferocity I don't mean bloodthirstiness. I mean voltage, energy, fire. I love the explosions, the wildness, the terror in his music. There are very few composers who manage to generate terror. Berlioz really does. He can frighten you."-

Snakish Slide. To prove his point, Davis is currently engaged in a Berlioz bash during a four-week guest stand with the New York Philharmonic at Manhattan's Lincoln Center. At the opening concert, devoted entirely to Berlioz works, the audience clearly got the idea of what Davis means by voltage and terror. The first composition was the overture to Les Francs-Juges, an unfinished opera about the secret vigilante courts that terrorized Germany in the Middle Ages. The overture, as Davis says, "has a sort of white-hot energy. In the middle there is the most pathetic, square melody that is savaged by the rest of the orchestra. It's like some virgin being taken through the most disgraceful scenes."

The overture was followed by the maligned Cléopâtre composition, sung by Mezzo Beverly Wolff, and several excerpts from the dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliet. The first is charged with imaginative pictorial touches—for example, the snakish slide of the violas and cellos as Cleopatra clasps the asp to her bosom. In Romeo and Juliet, Berlioz shows that he can be as tender with Shakespeare's young lovers as he is terrifying with Cleopatra. Berlioz did not, however, always have to rely on emotional pressure. The overture to the comic opera Beatrice and Benedict, which Davis played at his third concert last week, is a masterpiece of witty understatement that perfectly graces the champagne gaiety of the entire work.