TRACKLISTING
CD 1

Symphonie fantastique, op.14
I Rêveries - Passions
II Un bal
III Scène aux champs
IV Marche au supplice
V Songe d'une nuit du sabbat

CD 2

Lélio, ou Le Retour à la vie, op.14b
Narration
I Le pêcheur
Narration
II Ch¦ur d'ombres
Narration
III Chanson de brigands
Narration
IV Chant de bonheur - Hyme
Narration
V La Harpe éolienne - Souvenirs
Narration
VI Fantaisie sur la Tempête de Shakespeare
Narration and Coda

Tristia, op.18
I Méditation religieuse
II La Mort d'Ophélie
III Marche funèbre pour la dernière scène d'Hamlet

RECORDING INFORMATION
A fascinating double disc of Berlioz with Dutoit's great recording of the Symphonie fantastique leading into its sister work Lélio and the rarely heard Tristia.

Berlioz wrote his enormously popular Symphony fantastique (subtitled 'Episode from the life of an artist …') to express his passion for the English actress Harriet Smithson with whom he had fallen in love after seeing her performance as Ophelia in Hamlet. Dutoit's recording was made in 1984 and first released on Decca 414 203-2.

Lélio is written for orchestra, chorus and narrator and on this recording the narration is performed in the original French. A look at the Opus numbers reveals that it was written as a sequel to the Symphonie fantastique. Both works express the passions of the artist spurned by the woman he adores. Originally performed together in Paris in 1832, Lélio is quite different in form, being a miscellany of vocal and instrumental pieces rather than a symphony with programme notes. It features a narrator explaining the dramatic sequence of the six separate pieces held within the main ideas of the symphony itself.

In 1852, saddened by having to leave Paris after the uprising of 1848, Berlioz brought together three separate works under the title Tristia ("sad things"): the Méditation religieuse (a setting of a poem by Thomas Moore), La Mort d'Ophélie (on a poem by Ernest Legouvé) and a Marche funèbre (for the last scene of Hamlet).