Fantastique

Important note: Following the official indications on coronavirus prevention and containment, all of these season concerts have been cancelled.

Although in 1812 Beethoven suffered from bad health and had a broken heart – it was then that he wrote the famous letter to his “Immortal Beloved” – Symphony No. 8 contains optimistic, light and classical music due to the way he looks back to his master, Haydn. In the shadow of the popular Seventh and the revolutionary Ninth, the Eighth represents the most canonical and well-humoured Beethoven.

In contrast, Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony broke many of the conventions of the art of the symphony when it premiered in 1830. Berlioz took the inspiration for this novelesque fresco from his own sentimental Calvary, a story of heartbreak which he poured into the score and which gives it its shape and its great originality. Pinchas Steinberg, an outstanding conductor on the operatic circuit and grandmaster of the repertoire of Romanticism, will tackle this fabulous double symphonic challenge.