While vacationing in Florence, the young Berlioz lounged on the banks of the Arno reading Shakespeare's King Lear; he claimed that the play made him writhe "convulsively to relieve my feelings of rapture." He soon found a more dignified outlet for his delight in the form of the concert overture Le Roi Lear. Although it is his longest overture, it lacks a detailed program. Instead of following the action, the music seems merely to conjure the play's tragic atmosphere and, perhaps, depict the principal characters.

The stern opening motif for cellos and basses, a slow, angular recitative that owes much to Beethoven, is almost certainly a portrait of Lear. But the introduction also includes an oboe melody that could represent the king's abused daughter Cordelia. This gives way to a fortissimo brass outburst, which has been likened to Lear's angry reaction to Cordelia's refusal to curry favor with him as he divides his kingdom among his three daughters. Lear raises his head again in the ensuing Allegro, marked "disperato," in a very short, nervous, arch-like motif that seems to suggest the king's agitation and eventual madness. This section's second theme group yields yet another plaintive oboe melody that may evoke Cordelia. All the material is thoroughly developed in a style that looks ahead to the Symphonie fantastique: a lyricism derived from Italian bel canto opera, light and swirling material for violins and woodwinds, and grim chords intoned by the brass.

© All Music Guide