La damnation de Faust

Marc Soustrot is an expert on French orchestral literature, and he proves »discreet and powerful« and always »sensitive« (Tagesspiegel) as he guides the Malmö orchestra through the work’s numerous subtleties – moments of lightness, of luminous splendour, of beguiling luminescence, and passages that make the heartbeats of soloists quicken.

Berlioz used Goethe’s »Faust« as a point of departure, but the composer adapts the source material to his own ends, both in terms of the music and the text. He moves the initiation of the damnation to Hungary so that he can include his magnificent Rákóczi March. His Faust is less a scholar with a thirst for knowledge than a romantic melancholic type.

Berlioz’s imagination was sparked above all by Marguerite, whose role is sung at the Elbphilharmonie by the amazing Sophie Koch.