“Fantastique! Joshua Bell with the Sun Symphony Orchestra” concert

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) – Hungarian March (Rákóczi March) from The Damnation of Faust, Op. 24
Berlioz’s Hungarian March bursts with fiery energy and dazzling orchestral color. Composed during his 1846 tour in Hungary, it incorporates the famous Rákóczi March — a patriotic melody celebrating the national hero Francis II Rákóczi, who led Hungary’s uprising against Habsburg rule in the early 1700s.

In The Damnation of Faust, the march accompanies Faust’s imagined arrival in Hungary, setting the scene with a thrilling blend of national pride and theatrical spectacle. Berlioz transforms the folk tune into a symphonic showpiece: rolling drums, glittering piccolo flourishes, surging strings, and blazing brass lead to a headlong accelerando that whirls toward a triumphant close.

A favorite from the moment it premiered, the Hungarian March remains one of Berlioz’s most irresistible creations — bold, exuberant, and unmistakably his.

Camille Saint-Saëns – Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor, Op. 61
Soloist: Joshua Bell
Saint-Saëns composed his Violin Concerto No. 3 in 1880 for the dazzling Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, whose effortless technique and silken tone inspired the composer to create something both fiery and refined. By that time, Saint-Saëns was already internationally famous; he could have written a mere vehicle for display, but instead he crafted one of the most sophisticated concertos of the Romantic era—a perfect marriage of virtuosity and form.

The concerto opens without hesitation: the soloist bursts in over a dramatic orchestral chord, singing an expansive melody that immediately establishes both strength and elegance. The violin line climbs with vocal expressiveness, then darts into rapid filigree, as if demonstrating every nuance of human emotion in a single breath. Joshua Bell—renowned for his ability to combine technical brilliance with a lyrical, almost operatic phrasing—seems born for this repertoire. Saint-Saëns treats the orchestra as equal partner rather than mere accompaniment, allowing woodwinds and strings to echo and challenge the solo line in spirited conversation.

The slow movement is one of the loveliest Saint-Saëns ever wrote: a floating melody that drifts above gentle arpeggios, its serenity occasionally disturbed by bittersweet harmonic sighs. It’s the emotional heart of the concerto—restrained yet deeply touching, like moonlight filtering through the clouds. The finale sweeps in with rhythmic sparkle and sly humor. Spanish inflections—a nod to Sarasate’s heritage—dance through the phrases, and the violin’s leaps and trills seem to smile with confidence rather than showmanship. The final pages whirl to a brilliant close, but never lose their poise.

The Violin Concerto No. 3 embodies personal expression within that order—a perfect balance of intellect and fire, grace and intensity. It is music that glitters on the surface but glows with humanity underneath, and Bell’s artistry makes that glow unmistakable.

Hector Berlioz – Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 (1830)
Few works in history are as audacious, autobiographical, or flat-out hallucinatory as Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Written in 1830 when the composer was twenty-six, it is both a confessional and a manifesto—a declaration that the Romantic imagination would no longer be contained by classical restraint.

Berlioz was, by any measure, an emotional volcano. He fell hopelessly in love with an English actress, Harriet Smithson, after seeing her perform Hamlet in Paris, and his obsession consumed him. She did not know him; he wrote her fevered letters, dreamt of her nightly, and finally poured his tormented passion into this symphony, subtitled An Episode in the Life of an Artist. The work is, in essence, a five-movement opium dream: a descent from infatuation through despair to delirium.

At its core lies the idée fixe, a single melody representing the beloved. It slithers through every movement, constantly transformed as love mutates into longing, jealousy, rage, and hallucination. It was the first time in history that a recurring theme was used this way—not just as a motif, but as a psychological portrait.

I. Rêveries – Passions
The symphony begins with the artist in reverie, torn between tenderness and turmoil. The idée fixe first appears—graceful, yearning, a portrait of idealized love. But this dream is unstable: waves of passion surge, collapse, and surge again. Berlioz’s orchestration already shows his genius—harp glimmers, strings sigh, winds whisper like fleeting thoughts. We’re inside a mind that can’t stop thinking about someone.

II. Un bal (A Ball)
The scene shifts to a dazzling ballroom. Harps shimmer, and the waltz begins. For a moment, it’s all glittering chandeliers and swirling gowns. But amid the elegance, the artist glimpses his beloved, and the melody returns—teasing, unreachable. The joy of the dance becomes tinged with obsession. Underneath the glitter lies a shadow.

III. Scène aux champs (Scene in the Fields)
He seeks peace in nature. Two shepherds—represented by oboe and cor anglais—call to each other across a pastoral landscape. The music is gentle, almost naïve, yet restlessness lurks beneath the surface. When the shepherd’s duet breaks off and distant thunder rolls in the timpani, we feel the artist’s anxiety returning. The countryside cannot silence the inner storm.

IV. Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
Now the nightmare begins in earnest. In a drug-induced vision, the artist imagines he has killed his beloved and is being led to the guillotine. The march begins quietly, with grim determination. The orchestra swells—bassoons snarl, cymbals crash, brass blare in brutal unison. Just before the blade falls, the idée fixe appears one last time, sweet and fleeting, as if the beloved’s image flashes before his eyes. Then—whack!—the chord of execution. A single pizzicato note marks the severed head hitting the basket. (Berlioz had a flair for drama, and clearly a Halloween soul before Halloween existed.)

V. Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat (Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath)
The artist awakes in hell. The beloved’s melody returns, now grotesquely distorted—trilled and shrieked by the high clarinet. Bells toll, the ancient Dies irae chant thunders from the brass, and the entire orchestra joins a grotesque dance of witches, ghosts, and demons. Berlioz’s orchestration here is revolutionary: col legno strings (players striking the strings with the wood of the bow), eerie muted brass, shrieking winds. It’s the 19th century’s first true horror movie in sound.

The piece ends in a blaze of unearthly energy—a macabre celebration so vivid that even today it can send a chill down the spine. Beneath the spectacle lies something deeply human: the recognition that passion can both inspire and destroy. In that sense, Berlioz was writing about all of us.

With the Symphonie fantastique, the modern orchestra was born. Berlioz expanded its size, its color palette, and its psychological reach. He turned music into theatre, emotion into architecture, and fantasy into something frighteningly real.

The Arc of the Evening
Tonight’s program charts a journey from daylight into dream, from order to abandon. The Marche greets us with sunlight and ceremony; the Violin Concerto No. 3 brings human emotion, virtuosity, and sensual warmth; and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique leads us deep into the Romantic subconscious—love turned to obsession, beauty to delirium.

It’s a French journey in three acts: discipline, desire, and delirium.
Perfect music for a Halloween season—where elegance meets the eerie, and passion dances just this side of madness.