The very linking of Berlioz and the guitar still sounds like an improbable answer to a fantasy quiz question. Was it really one of the future radical orchestrator’s principal instrument of reference? Did he actually play it, and how competent was he?

The cover of the booklet – which should have been the photo on the CD’s jewel case – connects us immediately with the history, showing the actual guitar, autographed both by Berlioz and Paganini (who gave it to him), which Thibaut Roussel plays here. The instrument leads this new release where the three named soloists are joined occasionally by harp, cello and natural horn (from the same period, around 1830) in a programme of their own devising. This is based on the intimate musical evenings in which Berlioz is known to have participated as a performer on the guitar, either earlier in his life with his family in the country at La Côte-Saint-André or later in Paris with friends such as Eugène Sue and Ernest Legouvé. The latter recalled how they accompanied themselves in a piano-less apartment: ‘Luckily we had one triumphant resource, the guitar. The guitar encapsulated for Berlioz all the instruments, and he did play it very well. He took it and began to sing.’

The repertoire comprises arrangements of songs and incidental music by Berlioz and contemporary friends and colleagues, featuring nine items from an 1819 22 Recueil de Romances avec accompagnements de guitarre par M (Berlioz). So, from the hand of Berlioz himself, just these arrangements but no original guitar music. However, of note also – but for piano, not guitar – are numbers from Berlioz’s own La damnation de Faust and Harold en Italie, Liszt’s arrangement of ‘L’idée fixe’ from the Symphonie fantastique, three vocal items by Nicholas Dalayrac (whom the young Berlioz especially admired and was influenced by) and the opening Martini ‘Plaisir d’amour’.

The old instruments sound well in Harmonia Mundi’s recording, made at the Philharmonie de Paris (which did much to support the project). Stéphanie d’Oustrac brings style and sympathy to the texts without swamping the chamber atmosphere and Tanguy de Williencourt has quite some finale to the disc with Liszt’s arrangement of the Pilgrims’ March from Harold en Italie. It makes for both an attractive programme to hear and a peep at a side of Berlioz normally left to rumour.