Building a classical library  Belioz: Harold in Italy  Harold in
Italy is described as a "symphony", but it began life as a
concerto, commissioned in 1834 by Paganini, who wanted a work to
show off his newly acquired Stradivarius viola. Berlioz was too
impulsive and unruly a composer to follow the requirements of
any commission, and typically did his own thing. At that time he
was obsessed with Byron, and with his epic poem Childe Harold in
particular, and was determined to write a musical impression of
the archetypal romantic hero. Paganini, however, was less
convinced, and though he handed over the commission fee and came
to admire Harold in Italy, he never played the work, declaring
it "too full of rests".  The soloist represents Harold himself
as the melancholy, self-absorbed outsider wandering through a
series of landscapes. Nobody had written anything quite like the
piece before, and that sense of ground-breaking excitement is
conveyed most vividly in the only period-instrument performance
yet recorded,