Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra: French Fantastique
The ECSO will mark both World Pianist Day, November 8, and the 150th anniversary year of Maurice Ravel with a performance of Ravel’s jazz- and Basque-influenced Piano Concerto in G Major featuring pianist Mark Markham, the recital partner of legendary soprano Jessye Norman for more than 20 seasons. Also by Ravel: Boléro, in which a Spanish theme gradually increases in intensity and volume, which had its sensational premiere in 1928 at the Paris Opéra. Ravel was born four years after the death of another celebrated French composer, Hector Berlioz, whose Symphonie fantastique will close the program. Subtitled “Episodes in the Life of an Artist,” the five-movement piece follows an artist as he is lost in daydreams, attends a ball, visits the countryside, and, in opium-induced hallucinations, faces execution and witnesses a witches’ sabbath—all due to his rejection by a woman with whom he is obsessed. The woman in question? Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, who became Berlioz’s wife in 1833, three years after the premiere of his fantastic symphony.
