Filarmonica della Scala, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Julian Rachlin

ABOUT THE CONCERT

At the beginning of its second appearance at the Dvořák Prague Festival, the orchestra of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala will take the audience to Italy – with a detour through Paris. The composer of the famed Roman Carnival Overture is of course the French rebel, Hector Berlioz. This colourful, wild musical vision of ribaldry in the streets prepares us for his Symphonie fanstique on the second half of the programme. One of the most original compositions in music history, Berlioz’s symphony serves as a kind of intimate diary of his fateful relationship with the actress Harriet Smithson. After daydreaming and an encounter at a ball, there follows delirium, a dream of being taken to a place of execution, and a witches’ Sabbath. This glimpse into the soul of a despairing romantic is musically just as intoxicating as the opium that Berlioz is said to have indulged in occasionally. Between these flashes of lighting, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major glows with a pleasing incandescence. The wonderful soloist is Julian Rachlin, a violinist who claims that his desire was always to play cello. He should feel at home at the Dvořák Prague Festival.

PROGRAM 

Hector Berlioz
La carnival romain, Op. 9

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 3 in G major, K. 216

Hector Berlioz
Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14

PERFORMERS

FILARMONICA DELLA SCALA

ANDRÉS OROZCO-ESTRADA conductor

JULIAN RACHLIN violin