BBC SSO 2014-15 Season Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ at City Halls

A composer’s mind is an extraordinary place at the best of times; still, nothing in music quite matches the fabulous, opium-fuelled phantasmagoria that is Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Fired by unrequited desire, and sweeping from pastoral love-scenes to the foot of the guillotine itself, it continues to startle and amaze. Matthias Pintscher brings a composer’s insight, and teams up with one of the piano’s great explorers – Javier Perianes – to give a new shine to the sparkling exotica of Saint-Saëns’ delightful, unfairly neglected ‘Egyptian’ concerto. Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande will seem all the more serene by comparison - but dangerous passions smoulder beneath its exquisite melodies and shot-silk colours.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room
Writer and broadcaster Stephen Johnson introduces Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.

To be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, presented by Tom Redmond. The encore played by Javier Perianes was by Grieg: Notturno, Op.54, No.4 (Lyric Pieces).