Berlioz: Grande Messe des Morts, Royal Festival Hall

Compared to the Grand Messe des Morts (1837), Berlioz’s great contribution to the Requiem, Mozart’s earlier opus is compact and restrained. Lasting around ninety minutes, when first performed it required over four hundred musicians. Conducted by Esa-Pekka Salanon, it will provide the monumental opening to the Philharmonia orchestra’s 2014/2014 season.

Hector Berlioz was one of the most important composers of 19th century romanticism, blazing a path across the musical landscape with a series of works unprecedented in their scale and complexity. The requiem, commissioned to commentate soldiers slain in the July 1830 Revolution, might be most staggering of all his works. With ten movements that range from sheer terror to hopeful amens, the Grand Messe is a maelstrom of musical ideas.

Percussion, wind and brass, all too often subservient to strings, are front and foremost, with plaintive bassoons and barrages of drums. For the flamboyant Tuba mirum section, four brass bands flank the orchestra on each corner and play simultaneously to evoke the sound of the Last Judgment. Berlioz claimed that, if confronted with the burning of all his works bar one, this is the piece he would save. 

Esa-Pekka Salonen has been the principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Philharmonia since 2008. He is also one of the most significant composers of our time, with works that build on both his European modernist training and his passion for American minimalism. Pieces such as Floof and LA Variations have already become part of the contemporary repertoire. Sébastian Droy is a seasoned tenor whose technical excellence and performative intuition was honed at the Sorbonne, where he studied musicology. Philharmonic Voices, the Gloucester Choral Society and the Bristol Choral Society will join forces to sing Berlioz’s 210-voice score.