Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie fantastique’

Live at the BBC Proms: Thomas Adès conducts the National Youth Orchestra in Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie fantastique’ and in his own Dante-inspired Purgatorio.

Presented by Katie Derham, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 1
Thomas Adès: Dante – Part 2: Purgatorio

c.8.20pm
Interval: We explore the influence of Dante, the Italian philosopher and writer who used Tuscan dialect in his poem Divine Comedy, completed around 1321 shortly before his death. Dr Julia Hartley is a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Glasgow

c.8.40pm
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique

National Youth Orchestra
Thomas Adès (conductor)

Does the Devil really have all the best tunes? When it comes to classical music, he just might. Thomas Adès conducts The National Youth Orchestra – over 150 of Britain’s most talented teenagers – in a thrilling musical journey to Hell and back. Follow Faust into the irresistible, whirling dance of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1; contemplate Purgatory, ‘a sort of pre-dawn, before the sun of Paradise’, in Purgatorio – the central panel of Adès’s own Grammy Award-winning, Dante-inspired ballet; and surrender to the vast soundscapes and phantasmagoria of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, culminating in a horrifying ‘Witches’ Sabbath’.