Berlioz: Harold en Italie, Tabea Zimmermann, viola

Sir Colin Davis’s 1975 taping of Harold en Italie, with the LSO and Nobuko Imai as soloist, has been an easy “first choice” ever since. His new version for LSO Live finds the LSO in peerless form; textures are more transparent than before and accents kept needle-sharp. His soloist this time round, Tabea Zimmermann, is quite the equal of her illustrious predecessor, her control of the glinting sul ponticello arpeggios as the pilgrims retreat into the distance is spell-binding. While Sir Colin’s Mozart performances may have lost much of their former vitality, his Berlioz remains armed and dangerous, check out those brigands in the finale!

LSO Live’s documentation is as impressive as ever (there is a valuable essay by the eminence grise of Berlioz studies, David Cairns) and, hurrah!, a list of the orchestral personnel. The cover is a puzzle and a missed opportunity: a grim-faced Sir Colin against a brown background. What this has to do with Berlioz’s dazzling reminiscence of his journeying in the Abruzzi mountains is hard to fathom!

About the soloist

Tabea Zimmermann is a German violist, born in 1966 in Lahr, who began studying the instrument at the age of three before working with Ulrich Koch and the violinist and conductor Sándor Végh. Her international profile grew after winning the first Maurice Vieux International Viola Competition, and she has since held artist-in-residence positions with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Despite a substantial solo career, Zimmermann has devoted much of her professional life to chamber music. This live account of Berlioz’s Harold en Italie was recorded at the Barbican in February 2003 under Sir Colin Davis, the second of the two acclaimed LSO recordings of the work referenced in the review above, the first being Davis’s own 1975 studio account with Nobuko Imai.