Andris Nelsons conducts Ives and Berlioz
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
Music Director Andris Nelsons leads two very different works that we both innovative and experimental for their time. A staple of the BSO’s repertoire for generations, Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique virtually defined the emotional intensity of musical Romanticism while also vastly expanding orchestral virtuosity. Its five movements describe an artist’s emotional turmoil, ranging from blissful to unhinged, as he daydreams about his lover. Much more abstract and metaphysical is the American composer Charles Ives’s mysterious and questing tone poem The Unanswered Question (1908), which features a striking solo trumpet part against ensembles of strings and winds.
Featuring
Program Notes & Works
Symphonie fantastique
On December 9, 1832—two years after its first performance, and as vividly recounted in his own Memoirs—Hector Berlioz won the heart of his beloved Harriet Smithson, whom he had never met, with a concert including the Symphonie fantastique, for which she had unknowingly served as inspiration when the...
The Unanswered Question
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