Harold en Italie, Op. 16

Commissioned by Paganini in 1834 for a Stradivari viola he had recently acquired, Harold en Italie was inspired by Byron's Childe Harold and premiered in Paris that November. Paganini himself never played it — complaining that the solo part was too retiring — yet it became one of the great works combining viola and orchestra. Like the Symphonie fantastique, it deploys a recurring idée fixe (the Harold theme) that threads through all four movements representing the brooding, romantic wanderer. The viola acts less as a concerto soloist than as a poetic protagonist embedded in the orchestral landscape: the Pilgrims' March, the Serenade of an Abruzzi mountaineer, and the Brigands' Orgy all frame the viola's meditations. The work presents extraordinary demands of tone, legato, and expressive depth.