Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

Programme Igor Stravinsky, (1882–1971) Feu d'artifice (Fireworks) (1908–09) Thomas Adès, (1971–) Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2018) – Allegrissimo – Andante gravemente – Allegro giojoso INTERVAL Hector Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, H 48 (1830) – Rêveries – Passions. Largo – Allegro agitato e appassionato assai – Religiosamente – Un bal. Valse. Allegro non troppo – Scène aux champs. Adagio – Marche au supplice. Allegretto non troppo – Songe d’une nuit de sabbat. Larghetto – Allegro About the concert Adam Hickox and TSO invite you to yet another star-studded evening, full of fireworks, dancing piano playing and musical visions of horror. And we are so fortunate that we at last get the world-famous piano star Kirill Gerstein with us, and the Norwegian premiere of Thomas Ades’ playful piano concerto. We open the concert with Stravinsky's Feu d’artifice (Fireworks), a fanfare bursting with colour and swaggering energy, which lays the foundation for what is to come. Ades and Gerstein have collaborated for many years, and Ades’ Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was written for Gerstein. He impresses in this concerto, which is both sparklingly elegant, virtuosic and expressive, and he masters every aspect down to his fingertips, naturally and unaffectedly, in a concerto that has been described as a «dance with traditions». Berlioz’ mighty Symphonie Fantastique is the very first instrumental drama in music history, as Berlioz himself called it, in which the music is accompanied by an explanatory programme text. The symphony tells the story of a young musician with a broken heart who, in an opium haze, encounters more and more distorted and terrible visions. A fantastically colourful work for a large-scale orchestra that revolutionised the traditional symphony.

• Adam Hickox
• Kirill Gerstein

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