Name: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique
Start: 2025-10-24T20:00:00-04:00
Location: The Clarice

$Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: Berlioz\u2019s Symphonie fantastique$

Jonathon Heyward, conductor
Francesca Dego, violin
A selection of spirited and virtuosic works marks the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s (BSO) first performance of the season at The Clarice. Opening the program is Israfel, an invigorating orchestral work from the U.K.-based composer Mark Simpson that will premiere in Glasgow with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2015. The BSO continues with a powerhouse presentation of Sergei Prokofiev's intensely dramatic Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, featuring a masterful violin solo from virtuosic Italian-American instrumentalist Francesca Dego. Closing the performance is the cinematically enrapturing Symphonie fantastique, Hector Berlioz's first (and likely best known) major symphony. His somewhat autobiographical story of a heartbroken lover's mad opium trip established Berlioz at the forefront of the new progressive composers of his time and retains the power to astound nearly two centuries later. The evening closes with an on-stage discussion between Heyward and Stephanie Shonekan, dean of the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities.