Written when Berlioz was just 27-years-old, the Symphonie Fantastique is one of the great achievements in symphonic music, and a reinvention of the symphonic rules set out by Beethoven who died just three years before it was written. The ‘plot’ is an opium-induced patchwork of images, with five movements linked by a single theme, the idée fixe. The movements are supplied with sub-titles to explain events: Reveries – Passions; A Ball; Scene in the Country; March to the Scaffold and Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath. This idea (literally ‘obsession’) reaches its chilling climax when it is coupled with the terrifying Dies Irae plainchant. Vladimir Ashkenazy, one of the great names in Classical Music for over five decades and the Philharmonia’s Conductor Laureate, conducts. He is joined by Alina Pogostkina in the first half who performs Bruch’s Violin Concerto – one of the most easily recognisable works in all classical music, and a true favourite.
More concerts in Canterbury:
Järvi conducts in Canterbury
Jun 13 2014, 19:30 - Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury
Järvi conducts in Canterbury










