In 1834, the great violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini acquired a new Stradivarius viola. He approached 30-year-old French composer Hector Berlioz and commissioned him to write a viola concerto.
What Berlioz came up with, however, was a Romantic program symphony with a prominent part for solo viola, Harold in Italy, inspired by Byron’s narrative poem “Childe Harold.” Paganini was disappointed.
“That is not what I want,” he said. “I am silent a great deal too long. I must be playing the whole time.”
And so, when Harold in Italy was first performed, at the Paris Conservatory on today’s date in 1834, it was an old classmate of Berlioz’s, Chrétien Urhan, who was the soloist, not the superstar Paganini. The audience seemed to like the “Pilgrims’ March” movement of the symphony, which was encored, but otherwise the performance was one train wreck after another.
Four years later, however, Berlioz had the last laugh when Paganini, hearing the music he commissioned at a better performed concert, rose from the audience, mounted the stage and publicly declared Berlioz a genius, and, two days later, presented the stunned Berlioz with a check for 20,000 francs.
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) Harold in Italy; Nobuko Imai, viola; London Symphony; Colin Davis, cond. Philips 416 431