[CRASH TEST 1] Mainstage 2023-07-14 1830

A tour de force of lushly-scored romanticism and virtuosity, Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto was written in 1909, to perform on his first visit to the USA. The central Intermezzo equally balances melancholy with romance, before a glittering Finale. Berlioz’s revolutionary Symphonie Fantastique of 1830 is represented throughout by a single recurring, constantly reimagined theme intoned first by smooth violins, and ultimately parodied in the climactic Witches Sabbath—following the artist’s execution for her murder—as church bells toll the Dies irae.