Berlioz Chant des chemins de fer

 Day 156

Berlioz Chant des chemins de fer

Rollando Villazón

Orchestra nationale du capitol de Toulouse

Michael Plasson

I’ve been an Berlioz enthusiast for as long as I can remember. I’ve conducted/played a number of the orchestral works and have listened to virtually everything that he wrote. But this oddity had eluded me until now. I decided to start this brief exploration little known French music with this piece, not least because it was written to commemorate the opening of the railway between Lille and Paris and today I was travelling on that very line to start a short break in the Normandy area.

I’d know that Berlioz had written a piece with this title but didn’t know anything about it. I was expecting something fairly brief and loud without much subtlety but in fact there is quite a lot to this music. It had a generally brisk main theme - led by a solo tenor - which recurs several times, but there are also some slower sections including an impressive hymn-like passage. The music is full of Berliozian fingerprints and is unmistakably his. Although it was written in a hurry (3-4 days) and for much needed money it does in my view stand comparison with the composer’s more well-known music. Indeed had parts of it been incorporated into the Damnation of Faust I don’ think that anybody would have be any the wiser.

I am pretty sure that there is nothing else of Berlioz remaining for me to discover - I even know his toccata for Harmonium - the only piece of purely abstract music he ever wrote.