Presto Recording of the Week
18th January 2019

Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Stéphane Degout (baritone)

Les Siècles, François-Xavier Roth

Berlioz: Harold en Italie, Op. 16
Berlioz: Les Nuits d'été, Op. 7

A new aesthetic calls for new forms: such is the challenge the composer Hector Berlioz set for himself in the two works presented here.

In Les Nuits d’été, Berlioz pioneered, well before Mahler and Ravel, a song cycle for voice and orchestra.

In Harold in Italy, scored for large orchestra and solo viola, he experimented with the symphonic genre.

These period-instrument performances by Les Siècles, led by François-Xavier Roth with violist Tabea Zimmermann, also feature Stéphane Degout in the vocal cycle, heard here in the composer’s own version for baritone.

"Les Nuits d’été rapidly came to be seen as a vehicle for female voice. Stephane Dégout’s superb account makes clear this need not be so…Roth’s period-instrument ensemble Les Siècles provides superb support for Dégout, lifting rather than overpowering the voice…The orchestra is even more vivid when let loose on the adventures of Harold en Italie, bringing incisive rhythms, translucent textures and a fizzing energy, while Tabea Zimmermann holds nothing back." -