Despite the excellent intentions of the President of the French Republic, Berlioz’s remains were not removed to the Panthéon, and despite the composer’s own excoriation of the genre, the Festival Berlioz at La Côte-Saint-André continued to play arrangements, but as Berlioz’s two-hundredth birthday is succeeded by others less round in number, we continue to savor many fine performances and much good work. The international players arrogated excessive importance neither to themselves nor to their theme: the sort of fetishizing and retrofitting and theologizing of genius not long ago castigated in the lead article of a leading musicological journal nowhere sullied the waters. Berlioz weathered the storm: he remains a contender, one of the B’s, one of the best.

Looking Back

Anniversaries have always encouraged performance, and this one did, too, all around the globe. This is not the place to rehearse such worldly delights, but let it be noted that even in France Berlioz’s music was played, played frequently, and played well. The Orchestre de Paris, to whose ancestor, the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, Berlioz gave his personal scores and parts, completed a Berlioz cycle in 2003 that over several seasons offered almost everything we have, including what remains of Les Francs-Juges, concert performances of Benvenuto Cellini, and a Marche pour la présentation des drapeaux with twelve harps. The cycle was instigated by George-François Hirsch, directeur-général of the orchestra and berliozien par excellence. The same man presided over a Comité international Hector Berlioz, of which more below. Another Parisian Cellini (now available on a Virgin Classics CD) was concerted by the Orchestre national de France and the Choeur de Radio France under the direction of John Nelson. And a spectacular Parisian Les Troyens (now released on a BBC Opus Arte DVD) was staged at the Théâtre du Châtelet by the Orchestre révolutionnaire et romantique under the inspired leadership of John Eliot Gardiner. Much further professional music making dotted the anniversary landscape, and so, too, did noble efforts by students from near and far.