You may remember that, almost four years ago, the Asturias Symphony Orchestra played "Symphonie Fantastique" by Berlioz. At that time I wrote the article "Bells part in Berlioz´s Symphonie Fantastique". Because we have recently played the work again, I writing a new article, this time containing more and new information.
If you want to follow the music, you can download it legally and freely from this LINK (public domain).
What follows is my interpretation:
The bells we used (the same pair as the last time we played the work) are made by Paccard in Annecy (France), and they were provided by the rental company Percusonic.
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| © David Valdés |
The notes are G and C, and they are tuned using A 442 as the reference:
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| © David Valdés |
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| © David Valdés |
They are supplied with two pairs of hammers: one made of aluminium, the other made of bronze.
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| © David Valdés |
As you can see, each pair features different hammer sizes: the bigger one is used to hit the G bell, bigger and with more mass than the C one. So, the hammer size is related to the bell size. Same as the last time, and despite their horrendous weight, the bronze pair was chosen due to its superior sound quality and volume.
Set up off-stage, my "office" looked like this:
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| © David Valdés |
From there, this was the view I got through an open door of the conductor (remember the last time I was using a video monitor as a reference):
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| © David Valdés |
Finally, this photo was taken while playing in Gijón:
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| © OSPA/Marta Barbón |
And this one while playing in Oviedo.
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| © OSPA/Marta Barbón |
This article, together with the one I wrote almost four years ago, contains much information about this "obscure" and "secret" part, as it occurs off-stage, the audience not being able to see "what´s going on". Hope you enjoyed it.
…et in Arcadia ego.
© David Valdés
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