Hallucination

It is rare to witness a public execution and the subsequent “dream of a severed head” in a concert, but Hector Berlioz’s Symphony No. 1 does. Of course, it is all fantasy, but reality was more wonderful than fiction. In the symphony, Berlioz murders his love, the English actress Harriet Smithson, but years later married her. Michael Drapkin has reduced the orchestra in his arrangement, but not much emotion. Canadian-Finnish composer Matthew Whitt...