Robin Ticciati and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra to perform Berlioz works in October

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Robin Ticciati is passionate about Berlioz and continues his exploration of the composer’s works with Scottish Chamber Orchestra, opening the new season with Symphonie Fantastique and the rarely performed choral work Tristia on 6 October in Edinburgh and 7 October in Glasgow. He then goes into the studio for his first SCO recording (Linn Records) for TWO all-Berlioz releases including Symphony Fantastique, Overture to Béatrice & Bénédict and, for the second CD, La Mort de Cléopâtre and Les Nuits d’été with Scottish mezzo soprano Karen Cargill.

“Berlioz’s masterwork Symphonie Fantastique is most commonly associated with the symphony orchestra, but I am extremely excited by the prospect of playing it with the SCO as our opening concert of this new Season. It represents a natural continuation of our Berlioz journey which began with La Mort de Cléopâtre and L’Enfance du Christ, and I am hoping that with a rigorous attention to phrasing, articulation, the colour of dissonance and classical and early Romantic style, we will enter into this world of goblins, frenzied passion and loneliness and offer you a thought-provoking and new way of listening to the piece.” (Robin Ticciati)

Principal Conductor Robin Ticciati opens the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s 2011/12 Season with a bold programme of music by Hector Berlioz, including the rarely-heard choral work, Tristia, and the SCO’s first-ever performances of the composer’s iconic Symphonie Fantastique, a piece more usually associated with orchestras much larger in scale than the SCO. The concert will be performed at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on Thursday 6 October (sponsored by Virgin Money) and at the City Halls, Glasgow on Friday 7 October.

The symphony, written in 1830, is one of the major works of early Romanticism. It was described by Leonard Bernstein as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature. It has been suggested that Berlioz composed at least some of it under the influence of opium . An opera without words, it tells the story of an artist through five episodes in his life – including March to the Scaffold and Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath – as he is thrown into the depths of despair by love.

Ticciati and the SCO gave acclaimed performances of Berlioz’s La Mort de Cléopâtre and L’Enfance du Christ during the 2009/10 Season. Symphonie Fantastique continues that journey and is followed, later in the 2011/12 Season, by performances of the composer’s Les Nuits d’été, the Love Scene from Romeo & Juliet and Rêverie et Caprice.

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