Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra Performs Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique' on 220th Anniversary

13th at Gyeonggi Art Center · 14th at Yesul-ui Jeondang
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The Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique" on the 13th and 14th at the Gyeonggi Arts Center Grand Theater and the Seoul Arts Center Concert Hall.

As the sixth installment of the "Gyeonggi Phil Masterpiece Series," the conductor will be Ji Jung-bae, who in 2012 became the first Asian to win the German Operetta Conductor Award. Ji Jung-bae chose this piece to commemorate the 220th anniversary of Berlioz's birth this year.

"Symphonie fantastique" is a piece Berlioz completed while suffering from a severe fever of love. Berlioz fell passionately in love with Harriet Smithson, an actress who appeared in "Romeo and Juliet," and ardently courted her, but after being coldly rejected, he composed Symphonie fantastique with the pain of heartbreak. It is a program symphony with titles for each movement, consisting of five movements: 1st movement "Reveries ? Passions," 2nd movement "A Ball," 3rd movement "Scene in the Fields," 4th movement "March to the Scaffold," and 5th movement "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath."

Conductor Ji Jung-bae explained, "Berlioz's 'Symphonie fantastique' is a work that opened the door to the Romantic era. It is a piece that pours all human joys and sorrows into art?the emotions of love and failure, and the world of death encountered in hallucinations."

In the first part of the concert, Berlioz's overture "Roman Carnival" and American composer John Adams' 2012 work "The Chairman Dances" will be performed. "The Chairman Dances" will be premiered in Korea, featuring a collaboration with the Esm? Quartet, who won the prestigious Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in 2018. The Esm? Quartet has mainly performed chamber music in Korea but will collaborate with an orchestra for the first time in this concert. In March, they performed this piece with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of associate conductor Wilson Ng at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

"The Chairman Dances" is an innovative composition for string quartet and orchestra that rearranges and reinterprets various Beethoven music. Motifs from Beethoven's symphonies and string quartets continuously appear throughout the piece.

Esme Quartet [Photo provided by Gyeonggi Arts Center, ⓒsihookim]

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