Rob Roy Overture

Berlioz was only one of literally dozens of romantic composers - the most prominent of the others being Rossini, Donizetti, and Bizet - who found inspiration in the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott. He wrote a Waverley Overture as early as 1827, when he was still a student at the Paris Conservatoire, and Rob Roy followed four years later, when, as holder of the coveted Prix de Rome, he ought to have been in Rome absorbing the relics of antiquity but was actually having the time of his life in Nice. However, unlike the King Lear Overture, which he wrote at much the same time, Rob Roy did not meet with the composer’s ultimate approval: it was performed once, at the Société des Concerts in Paris in 1833, and was then withdrawn - never, as far as Berlioz was concerned, to be heard again. It was only because he happened to submit a copy of the score to the Institut de France, which awarded the Prix de Rome and required evidence of the prizewinner’s devotion to creative duty, that the work has survived.

The composer’s own judgement of Rob Roy as “long and diffuse” is excessively severe. Since most of it proceeds at an Allegro non troppo tempo, accelerating to Presto and Più presto towards the end, it is actually quite short. No one moreover could for a moment be impatient with the Larghetto espressivo assai middle section, which is based on the lovely melody Berlioz later associated with the Byronic hero of Harold in Italy. Just as the solo viola represents Harold in that work, the cor anglais seems to represent thew outlawed Rob Roy Macgregor in this one: certainly, it is the cor anglais which introduces the most cheerful tune in the Allegro non troppo section, which is otherwise dominated by allusions to Scots wha’ hae, and it has the lyrical middle section largely to itself.

Rupert Avis