Orchestre de Paris / Antoine Tamestit / Daniel Harding

For a young French composer there is no greater honour to this day than the Prix de Rome, which awards a bursary to spend several semesters studying in the Eternal City. The only prizewinner to see things differently was Hector Berlioz, who only managed to win the award at the fifth attempt. H was so bored at the Académie de France in Rome that he preferred to sit in the cool interior of St Peter’s Basilica and read adventure stories by Lord Byron, while his beloved back in Paris moved on to other pastures. Berlioz interwove his experiences with Byron’s (likewise partly autobiographical) epic »Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage« to produce his solo concerto »Harold in Italy«, where the viola part represents the »melancholy dreamer« – Berlioz himself. In this concert, viola virtuoso Antoine Tamestit takes on the role. After the interval, we hear what is probably the best-known landscape description in the history of music: Beethoven’s »Pastoral« Symphony.