麻豆社

Conductor Mark Wigglesworth returns to the 麻豆社 Philharmonic for a programme by musical pioneers.

Messiaen's "Un sourire" opens the programme, this smile vibrating with rainbow colours and spiritual mystery. This, his last commissioned work, was written to commemorate Mozart's memory and Messiaen says that "despite bereavements, sufferings, hunger, cold, incomprehension and the proximity of death, Mozart still smiled, and also his music".

The life of a troubled artist is to the fore in Berlioz's ground-breaking "Symphonie fantastique". Unrequited love and opium fuel an artist's personal journey; a torturous, opulent waltz, a wild witches' dance, and deathly bells are all presented in a score which explores every character of the orchestra.

Star soprano Dorothea R枚schmann joins the 麻豆社 Philharmonic for a performance of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder. Poetry by Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner's lover and muse as he began work on the poetry for Tristan and Isolde, inspired these songs. Ultimately this passionate and artistically fruitful relationship was doomed to failure, but their collaboration leaves us a chance to hear music by a composer who broke the mould with his large-scale music-dramas experiment on a smaller scale.

Messiaen: Un sourire
Wagner, orch Mottl: Wesendonck Lieder

8.05pm
Music Interval

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique

Dorothea R枚schmann (soprano)
麻豆社 Philharmonic
Mark Wigglesworth (conductor)

Recorded at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on 22 June.
Presented by Tom McKinney