Orchestral colours

Tom Service joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Pascal Rophé to explore music by Berlioz, his friend Liszt and by the 20th century French composer Henri Dutilleux.

Recorded in Maida Vale Studio 1 on 6 July 2018.

Berlioz: Carnival Romain
Berlioz: La Captive *
Liszt: Les Preludes
Dutilleux: Timbres, espace, mouvement [La nuit etoilée]

Marta Fontanals-Simmons (mezzo soprano*)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Pascal Rophé (conductor)

BBC Radio 3 celebrates the 150th anniversary of the death of the great French composer Hector Berlioz with a weekend of live and pre-recorded concerts from across the UK by all the BBC's Orchestras and Choirs.

Tom Service finds out more about Berlioz's skills as an innovative composer of orchestral music; and traces Berlioz's influence on Liszt, a great admirer of the Frenchman's music who championed and introduced much of Berlioz's orchestral music to a wider public via his piano arrangements. Liszt had been at the premiere of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, an experience which may have sparked him twenty years later to create a new musical form, the Symphonic Poem performed today in Les Preludes.

The tidal current of Berlioz's brilliance has exerted its pull across the generations and, moving forward a century, Tom talks to conductor Pascal Rophé about another Berlioz devotee Henri Dutilleux. That's before a performance of Dutilleux's essay in colour Timbres, espace, mouvement [La nuit etoilée], which was inspired by Van Gogh's painting The Starry Night.