Composer Hector Berlioz wrote the following about this work:
”My idea was to write a series of scenes for the orchestra in which the solo viola would be involved as a more or less active character, always retaining its own individuality. By placing the viola in the midst of poetic recollections of my wanderings in the [Italian] Abruzzi, I wished to make of it a sort of melancholy dreamer after the manner of Byron’s Childe Harold. Thus the title: Harold in Italy.”
Here is violist Yuri Bashmet as soloist in “Harold in Italy”:
