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.



This concert was filmed on 1 October 2021 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.



Program:

Lutoslawski Cello Concerto - Cello Conterto

Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique