Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique

Advantages: Colourful and always exciting
Disadvantages: absolutely none

...GENERAL HISTORY LEADING TO SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE Hector Berlioz was a French composer, born in 1803 in a little village of La Côte Saint-André. At a very early age he learned to play the flute and guitar and composed a number of little songs, two flute quintets and even a small opera "Estelle et Némorin" (Estelle incidentally being his first love interest, when he was only 13 and she in her late twenties). His father wanted to make a doctor out of him and sent him to Paris, but Hector soon dropped out of the medical school, not being able to stomach the atmosphere of the profession. He joined the Paris Conservatoire instead and soon became enthralled with the music of Gluck and Beethoven, with the literature and poetry of Virgil and the plays of Shakespeare. It was in a Shakespeare play (Hamlet) that he first saw an actress named... Read review

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Advantages: The idee fixe. Unique and contrasting.
Disadvantages: None whatsoever.

...Composed by Hector Belioz Performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) Conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras Label Royal Philharmonic Price £12.99 Available in most good music stores Berlioz was born in Lyons in 1803 and spent most of his working life in Paris. Belioz used his musical idol Beethoven as his role model when composing his Symphony Fantastique. He was obsessed by the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. He wrote her dozens of letters to which she never replied. Years later, she they did meet and they eventually married though not successfully. Berlioz decided to express his experiences through music. Using Beethoven's handling of the symphony, Berlioz set about to construct a a symphony that retained many of the traditional elements yet pushed it towards a new direction. Symphonie Fantastique has five movements each... Read review

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Advantages: Great passion, beautiful melodies, unrestrained romanticism
Disadvantages: The finale doesn't quite convince in it's purpose

...and distinctly external force that crushes our hope with brute force. In the Fifth, Fatum is not quite so overstated, but is perhaps even more terrifying. Here Fatum appears in the form of an idée fixe, a term coined by Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique for a fixed idea that stubbornly reappears in every movement (a kind of precursor of Wagner's leitmotif). Rather than being a forceful entity appearing amid dreams of happiness, Fatum in the Fifth is more all-enveloping, intruding more subtlely into every germ of our mind. This makes the Fifth perhaps a more refined and less destructive work than the Fourth for casual listeners, but is no less powerful. MINOR CRITICISMS Tchaikovsky set to work on the symphony in May 1888, finishing the score in August of the same year. The work was premiered in St.Petersburg on November 17, 1888 under... Read review

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