Composer of the Week: Berlioz

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Estelle

Estelle

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), Estelle

Donald Macleod sees Berlioz’s life come full circle as he tries rekindling an old flame.

Donald Macleod explores the women who shaped Hector Berlioz’s life and work. Today, Berlioz’s life comes full circle as he tries rekindling an old flame.

Donald Macleod sees Berlioz’s life come full circle as he tries rekindling an old flame.

Hector Berlioz was one the most innovative and rebellious musicians of 19th-century France. He was a man of unwaveringly high expectations, in his wider life as well as his music. As the quintessential Romantic, one friend said that love was the “alpha and omega of his existence”. This week Donald Macleod looks at Berlioz through the passions and relationships that shaped who he was and what he created, exploring the romantic obsessions of an especially obsessive man. We’ll also hear a movement of his Symphonie Fantastique each day – Berlioz’s best known work, and the musical embodiment of his most powerful infatuation.

In today's programme, having buried both his wives, Berlioz decides to seek out his childhood love, Estelle Duboeuf. This boyhood passion always stayed with him and sparked not only his desire to compose, but his lifelong quest for ideal love. For Berlioz, Estelle was the first, and it would fall to her to end the story.


Au Cimetière (Nuits d’été)
Veronique Gens, soprano
Opera National de Lyon
Louis Langree, conductor

Rêverie et caprice for violin
Renaud Capucon
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie
Daniel Harding, conductor

Les Troyens : Act IV, Nos 34b-37 ("O blonde Ceres…Nuit d’ivresse")
Kenneth Tarver (Iopas)
Michelle DeYoung (Didon)
Ben Heppner (Enee)
London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Colin Davis, conductor

Le dépit de la bergère, H. 7
Elsa Dreisig, soprano
Jeff Cohen, piano

Symphonie Fantastique (5th movement – Songe d’une nuit de sabbat)
San Francisco Symphony
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor


Produced in Cardiff by Amelia Parker

Composer of the Week: Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

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Donald Macleod looks at Berlioz through the passions and relationships that shaped him.

Donald Macleod looks at Berlioz through the passions and relationships that shaped who he was and what he created.

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Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

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