Fantastic Symphony | London Philharmonic Orchestra

Frustrated in love, a young musician of deep sensitivity and ardent imagination takes opium. That’s how Hector Berlioz sets up his Symphonie fantastique – a story of gothic horror and glittering excess, rolled into one roof-raising musical phantasmagoria and scored for the biggest orchestra the world had then seen. It’s a fabulous way for the LPO’s new Principal Conductor Edward Gardner to raise the curtain on our new season, and a fitting counterpart to the teeming imagination and dramatic power of Lutoslawski’s Cello Concerto – played by the superb Nicolas Altstaedt. Lili Boulanger brings up the curtain: a breath of spring air, on an autumn day.