Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique

Hector Berlioz wrote an iconic work symbolizing the freedom and boundless creativity of the romantic soul with his revolutionary Symphonie fantastique.

What are you going to listen to?

Farrenc

The beginning of this revolutionary evening is for Louise Farrenc, a composer from a family of artists with generations of sculptors and painters who had been associated with the court since Louis XIV. Louise's artistic drive, however, lay more in music. She had private lessons from prominent piano pedagogues such as Reicha, Moscheles and Hummel, became a concert pianist and married Aristide Farrenc, who was just setting up a music publishing business. In 1842, another important position was added: she was appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire. This made her the only female professor appointed to the conservatory in the nineteenth century. And also someone who was in favor of equal rights; in fact, she forced equal payment for her work at the conservatory. A revolutionary idea for the time.

In 1834, she wrote her first orchestral works: two overtures. Later, three more symphonies and an unfinished piano concerto would follow. Despite her marriage to a publisher, her orchestral music was not printed until late in the twentieth century. Following in the footsteps of the Viennese classics that had now penetrated Paris, the Second Overture was constructed according to a sonata form with contrasting themes and lyrical passages. Her orchestrations were so interesting that even master orchestrator Berlioz studied this overture and referred to the composer as very talented.

Prokofiev

Although 1917 is recorded as an extremely tumultuous year in the annals of Russia, it was actually a very productive year for Sergei Prokofiev. His Classical symphony was completed, as were a number of piano sonatas, and he worked on his Third Piano Concerto. His First Violin Concerto also saw the light of day in this year of revolution, although its lovely opening theme had already been created in 1915, at the time of his relationship with Nina Mashcherskaya, daughter of a wealthy industrialist. That lyrical, dreamy theme which steadily builds up turns into a hectic theme which, according to Prokofiev, should be played as if you were trying to convince someone of something. The contrasting music of the Scherzo is alternately amusing, mischievous and sometimes even malicious but always violinistically ingenious and brilliant. The lovely, almost undulating final movement ends with the music dying away. The premiere of this Violin Concerto - only six years later in Paris - was overshadowed by Prokofiev's own, more fashionable Octet for wind instruments but would later find its way into concert halls nonetheless.

Berlioz

One of Hector Berlioz 's famous sayings was, "My life is a novel that interests me fiercely. The most exciting chapter of that novel is undoubtedly that part he wrote down in notes at the beginning of his career titled "Episode from the Life of an Artist," but became famous as Symphonie fantasique . Berlioz had fallen like a log for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. He pursued her desperately for several years, but to no avail. It is reflected in the overwrought but brilliant symphony whose program is a nightmarish fantasy of impossible love that begins cheerfully with a ball and a shepherd's tableau, but ends on the scaffold and in hell, complete with witches' Sabbath. The genius lies mainly in the use of an overarching drawn-out theme that symbolizes the unattainable woman and keeps changing with the story, at first soft and idyllic, but eventually shrill as a demonic Satan's dance. It is a recurring "idée fixe" that makes the symphony, in all its parts and varied emotions, a magnificent unity.

But on closer inspection, there are more ladies attached to this symphony than just Harriet. For example, the idée fixe was originally dedicated to Herminie, protagonist of the cantata of the same name that he wrote in 1828 in an (unsuccessful) attempt to win the Prix de Rome. He derived the first bars of the symphony from a romance he had composed as an adolescent in love for his first great passion, Estelle. And when he was busy organizing the first performance of the Fantastique immediately after its completion, he had meanwhile fallen jet-lagged in love with Camille Moke, whom he passionately called "my enchanting sylph, my Ariel, my life. Harriet he had dismissed as 'that rotten girl of Smithson's'. On December 5, 1830, the first performance took place in the great hall of the Paris Conservatory. How that sounded we no longer know. For it was not until 1845 that Berlioz had the symphony published in print, after several substantial changes in the score.