NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Andrés Orozco-Estrada
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique / Kaija Saariaho
Kaija Saariaho’s artistic credo sounds like an echo from long-gone times of innocence: »I believe in purity,« says the Finnish composer about herself. Her works have titles such as »The Secret Garden«, »The Lock of the Soul«, or »The Grammar of Dreams«. And her opera »L’Amour de loin« tells the story of a love-struck young knight who writes poems to a faraway oriental lover in Tripoli and longs for her unattainable beauty.
Indian lullabies and poems by Seamus Heaney, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mahmoud Darwish were used as a basis for the text of her new song cycle »True Fire«, which is dedicated to baritone Gerald Finley. It contains the same quiet fire that characterised her earlier works.
Hector Berlioz, on the other hand, ignites a very different fire with his music. His »Symphonie fantastique« is a through-composed delirium, inspired by the fatal longing for actress Harriet Smithson and by Thomas de Quincey’s autobiographical »Confessions of an English Opium-Eater« (1821). The symphony culminates in a march to the scaffold and a demonic witches Sabbath.
Performers
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester
Gerald Finley baritone
conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada
Programme
Kaija Saariaho
True Fire für Bariton und Orchester / Deutsche Erstaufführung
Hector Berlioz
Symphonie fantastique / Episode de la vie d'un artiste op. 14