Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique San Francisco Symphony & Esa-Pekka Salonen

• Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869): Symphonie Fantastique, H48:
• 1 Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, H48: I. Reveries, Passions 14:20
• 2 Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, H48: II. A Ball 06:32
• 3 Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, H48: III. Scene in the Fields 17:00
• 4 Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, H48: IV. March to the Scaffold 04:36
• 5 Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, H48: V. Dream of a Witches' Sabbath 09:38
• Total Runtime 52:06

Info for Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

Witches, ghouls, and ghosts abound in this wonderfully wicked concert led by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique paints scenes of lavish beauty and ghastly visions, while pianist Bertrand Chamayou takes on the devilish charm of Franz Liszt’s Totentanz. Listen for the frightful sounds of supernatural beings as they dance deep into the night in Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.

Many a dark and stormy night thundered through the years of the Romantic era, which took form in the late 18th century in literature and painting and erupted in full force in the first half of the 19th. Among the Romantic obsessions were themes involving supernatural beings, unhinged psychologies, and imminent dread; think of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) at one end of the century and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) at the other. Romantic composers added their voices to the aesthetic.

Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain depicts a witches’ sabbath on St. John’s Eve, the summer solstice celebrated in Slavic cultures, with deep roots in the pagan past. The piece was “civilized” in a heavy revision by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, but today we hear Mussorgsky’s original, wilder intentions.

The Dies irae chant, which figures in the Roman Catholic liturgy of the Mass for the Dead, is used in both Franz Liszt’s Totentanz and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Liszt attended that work’s premiere in 1830 and encountering morbid frescoes in Italy added further impetus for him to write this Dance of Death, a virtuosic work for piano and orchestra that unrolls through variations on the haunting melody.

In the psychedelic expanses of Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz imagines being in love and poisoning himself with opium. He has a vision in which he kills his beloved, is sentenced to death, and then parties with witches and demons alongside the now-fallen girl.

San Francisco Symphony
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor

Esa-Pekka Salonen
is known as both a composer and conductor. He is currently the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, where he works alongside eight Collaborative Partners from a variety of disciplines ranging from composers to roboticists. He is Conductor Laureate for London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, where, as Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor from 2008 until 2021, he spearheaded digital projects such as the award-winning RE-RITE and Universe of Sound installations and the much-hailed app for iPad, The Orchestra; the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was Music Director from 1992 until 2009, and was instrumental in opening the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall; and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He is currently in the midst of Multiverse Esa-Pekka Salonen, a two-season residency as both composer and conductor, at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg; he is also the Composer in Residence at the Berliner Philharmoniker. As a member of the faculty of LA's Colburn School, he develops, leads, and directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. He is the cofounder—and until 2018 served as Artistic Director—of the annual Baltic Sea Festival. In 2015 he addressed the Apple Distinguished Educator conference on the uses of technology in music education, and his Violin Concerto was featured in an international campaign for iPad.

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