This coffee break digs deeper into the brilliant career of Hector Berlioz. A Shakeperean expert who read the Bard and English and French, he composed music for King Lear. But Hector was a wanderer and refused to be defined by any prexisting order of music. He delved into Lord Byron's Romanticism and produced the wonderful Harold in Italy, which reproduced his own travels in Italy. The piece, though lovely, was not virtuosic enough for Niccolò Paganini, for whom it was written. Yet it was cinematic before cinema. And what did Berlioz teach Wagner about leitmotif?

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