Confront destiny, death, and delirium in a programme that pushes the Romantic orchestra to its most vivid extremes.
We open with Verdi’s La Forza del Destino Overture. Written for an opera obsessed with fate’s relentless grip, this overture packs the whole drama’s turbulent arc into a few electrifying minutes, from its four hammer-blow opening chords to its surging, fateful main theme.
The mood darkens further with Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death, heard in Shostakovich’s stark orchestration. Across four searing songs, Death appears as lullaby-singer, seducer, reveller, and conqueror, claiming a child, a young woman, a drunkard, and an army in turn. It is one of the most chilling and powerful song cycles in the repertoire, its bleak poetry matched by Mussorgsky’s unflinching musical imagination.
Our concert reaches its wild conclusion with Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. A landmark of programmatic music, it follows an artist through opium-fuelled visions of love, despair, and nightmare, culminating in the murderous “March to the Scaffold” and the diabolical revelry of the “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath.” Scored with extraordinary imagination, it remains one of the boldest and most thrilling symphonies ever written.
The doors will open at 7pm and tickets are available on the door as well as online.