Period orchestras usually base their approach to Romantic repertoire on the playing style they have developed for earlier music. A big effort is also made to use appropriate instruments for each piece: this means, for example, using French wind instruments for playing Berlioz, which are dramatically different to the German instruments appropriate for Brahms. Symphonie Fantastique decided to try the opposite approach. From what we read in 19th Century treatises and what we hear in the earliest recordings, the taste and the style of 19th Century musicians was something very different from everything we hear today, resembling neither the way modern orchestras nor period orchestras play. Not only that: even at a given moment, taste and style differed greatly from country to country.
So, how do we explore all these differences and put them all together in a program that contains, as in our case, Beethoven and Onslow? Even if this were possible, it would make very little sense, to us or to the listener. That’s why we decided to spend time investigating the Viennese style of the second half of the 19th Century and playing on instruments appropriate to this place and time, taking as reference points not only treatises but also recordings of – just to name a couple – Joachim (Brahms’ violinist and close friend) and Arnold Rosé (Konzertmeister of the Vienna Philharmonic from the early 1880’s for more than 50 years).
A performance of Symphonie Fantastique is therefore not a general mix of styles and instruments but an attempt of reproducing the sound and style of a specific time and place. For some time to come this will be Vienna, in the second half of the 19th Century.
