Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) was a French Romantic composer whose orchestral, choral and dramatic works reshaped the scale and colour of nineteenth-century music. His output includes the Symphonie fantastique, the Te Deum and the song cycle Les nuits d’été.
Move’s catalogue carries his music through Australian performance rather than as a local biography. The monumental Te Deum (MCD 098), written in 1849, appears in a large-scale Melbourne recording that balances massed choirs, orchestra, tenor and organ across hymns and prayers of striking breadth, from the melodic Tibi omnes to the architectural Judex crederis.
His song cycle Les nuits d’été is heard in another light on Evenings with the French Horn (MCD 640), in a transcription for French piston-valve horn and piano that places the familiar songs beside the natural and valved horns of nineteenth-century France.
Hector Berlioz is featured on the following titles
Te Deum
Conductor André de Quadros assembles six highly acclaimed choirs, the New Monash Orchestra, tenor soloist Dwayne Jones and organist Linda Kent for Berlioz’s monumental Te Deum.
Compositions by Hector Berlioz also appear on
Evenings with the French Horn
Mark Papworth (natural and valved horns) and Rosa Scaffidi (piano) play Berlioz and Blanc in repertoire that sets the two French horn types of the late nineteenth century side by side.