Orchestre National de France

Eros and Thanatos, love and death: the central themes of art. In very different ways, this opposite, intertwined pair that permeates the lives, thoughts, and feelings of humankind is also at the centre of this programme. Hector Berlioz's «Symphonie fantastique» is an autobiographically inspired dream of love that turns into a nightmare: in an opium fever, the rejected man believes he has killed his lover, is executed, and finds himself with his victim on a witches' sabbath. With its ground-breaking innovations, the work was the musical scandal of the Romantic age. In contrast, Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto is intimate and personal in different way. It is at once a wistful remembrance, elegiac swan song, and moving lament for the dead of the First World War.