Hector Berlioz Photo: Public Domain
With a swashbuckling opening that conductor Hans von Bülow likened to “a shot from a pistol,” 'Le Corsaire' encapsulates not only the emotional extremes so prevalent in Romantic music, but also the adventurous spirit of the
pirate.
Although Berlioz at one point named the overture Le corsair rouge, after James Fenimore Cooper’s nautical
adventure novel The Red Rover, Berlioz later shortened the overture’s name to Le Corsaire, a clear reference
to Lord Byron’s long poem of the same name.
Berlioz deeply admired the poem, “I followed the Corsair in his desperate adventures; I adored that inexorable yet tender nature - pitiless, yet generous - a strange combination of apparently contradictory feelings; love of woman, hatred of his kind.”
'Le Corsaire' personifies these contradictions. The driving energy of the opening is interrupted by a tender and serene Adagio, an oasis of calm, before the work plunges back into the flurrying onrush of the opening and a galloping coda. (Notes: NZSO)
Recorded 6 August 2020, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert
Producer: David McCaw
Engineer: Darryl Stack
