the Land Beyond Woodfield

March 2010: Elgin Symphony to Perform Beethoven 7th, Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer's Night Dream: Overture, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante

Coming up in March, the Elgin Symphony Orchestra will present several performances of Beethoven’s compelling and joyous 7th Symphony.  The complete program consists of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer's Night Dream: Overture, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.  Performances will take place at both Hemmens Theater in Elgin and at the Prairie Center for the Arts in Schaumburg.

 

Elgin Symphony Orchestra to perform Symphonie Fantistique in June, 2010

 

 

It's not too early to plan for this exciting concert by the Elgin Symphnoy Orchestra.

 

Symphonie fantastique (Fantastic Symphony) was written by French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is widely regarded as one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period, and is still very popular with concert audiences worldwide.

The symphony is a piece of program music which tells the story of "an artist gifted with a lively imagination" who has "poisoned himself with opium" in the "depths of despair" because of "hopeless love."

Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium. According to Bernstein, "Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral."