"Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral."So wrote Leonard Bernstein about the bizarre, masterful, modernistic Symphonie fantastique of Hector Berlioz. Listen in as we discover the incredible history behind the piece, the imagined (or is it?) unrequited love, and the terrifying "March to the Scaffold"... what is really going on here? And how in the world could Berlioz and Beethoven have been alive at the same time?
Listen in as host Daniel Lelchuk breaks it all down, and then plays the piece in its entirety in a white-hot performance from 1983.
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Hector Berlioz Symphonie fantastique: épisode de la vie d'un artiste...en cinq parties Op. 14; New Orleans Philharmonic Symphony; Philippe Entremont, conducting