The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis here\nperform seven dazzling orchestral overtures by Hector Berlioz, a\ncomposer who excelled in blending literary and musical elements\ninto highly energetic and personal creations.

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The overtures are widely varied in mood, as are the operas from\nwhich they were drawn. Berlioz wrote his first large-scale\ninstrumental composition, the Overture to Les Francs-juges, in\n1826, the year in which he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire.\nEven though the opera itself was never performed, Berlioz remained\nproudly affectionate of the overture, which was played all over\nGermany and Holland in its early days. His second opera, Benvenuto\nCellini, followed in 1838; its music gave rise both to the opera’s\noverture and to the concert overture Le Carnaval romain which\ndepicts its subject in brilliant colour through breathtakingly\nvibrant orchestration.

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The comic opera Béatrice et Bénédict took its inspiration from\nShakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. The overture draws on an\nintense solo scene for Béatrice and adds elements of the cheerful\nbanter that make up the story of the title characters’ playful\ncourtship.

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When Berlioz visited the Hungarian capital Pest in 1846, it was\nsuggested to him that one way of winning the hearts of the\naudiences there would be to make an arrangement of the beloved\nRákóczy March, which up until that point had been known only as a\npiano piece. Berlioz agreed, and on the very night before he left\nfor Pest, he put together his own orchestral version of the piece.\nIt was a resounding success when performed at his first concert, to\nthe extent that Berlioz promptly included it in the large work on\nwhich he was working at the time: La Damnation de Faust.

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Le Roi Lear, Le Corsaire, and Waverley have one thing in common:\nall are independent concert pieces that have been given the title\noverture as in many respects they do resemble opera overtures – but\nnone is in actual fact connected to an opera. The composer here\ntook his inspiration from literary works. Le Roi Lear, for\ninstance, is a remarkable tone portrait of Shakespeare’s deranged\nking, full of energy and anger, while Le Corsaire may be loosely\nbased on Byron’s The Corsair. Berlioz based Waverley on a novel of\nthe same name by Sir Walter Scott, and the score bears a quotation\nin English: ‘Dreams of love and Lady’s charms, give place to honour\nand to arms.’ The contrast expressed so well in this simple\nquotation is equally evident in the music itself. Here the ‘dreams\nof love’ unfold in a long cello melody, which is repeated with\nricher orchestrations, before leading into the vigorous musical\ndepiction of ‘honour and arms’.

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