Symphonie fantastique from Leipzig

Elizabeth Alker showcases the best performances by BBC orchestras, choirs, ensembles and other great performing groups from Europe and around the globe.

Throughout the week, we’ll be hearing works composed in Leipzig by the many composers who lived and visited there at the time Robert and Clara Schumann got married in the 1840s; they all visited the Schumann house (which still exists today as a school and museum). Today, we’ll hear from both Robert and Clara, as well as Felix Mendelssohn and Richard Wagner; and we start at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig with Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.

Hector Berlioz
Symphonie fantastique
MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig
Paolo Bortolameolli (conductor)

Clara Schumann
Piano Concerto in A minor
Beatrice Rana (piano)
Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra
Gustavo Gimeno (conductor)

Richard Wagner
Rienzi Overture
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Zubin Mehta (conductor)

Robert Schumann
Paradise and the Peri (Part 2)
Lenneke Ruiten (soprano (Peri))
Hanna Herfurtner (soprano)
Ulrike Schneider (alto)
Manuel Günther (tenor)
Tobias Berndt, baritone
MDR Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra
Dennis Russell Davies (conductor)

Felix Mendelssohn
Symphony No 3, ‘Scottish’
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Riley Court-Wood (conductor)