Belgian National Orchestra, Schønwandt & Kolesnikov

Love as a driving force — and as a dangerous one: this is the central theme of this Friday Symphony. After a gentle, dreamlike lament by Paul Dukas, in homage to Debussy's genius, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Second Piano Concerto takes centre stage. Brilliant, sharp and playfully free, it lets the piano sparkle between virtuosity and irony. Pavel Kolesnikov, Bozar artist in residence, shines in this work of elegant nervous energy and refined spontaneity. The evening then plunges into the visionary world of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. A confessional and incendiary work, born from the composer’s all-consuming passion for actress Harriet Smithson, it charts a descent from romantic dream to obsession, hallucination and nightmare. The famous “idée fixe” motif runs through every movement, sweeping the listener from glittering ballrooms to lonely fields, from the march to the scaffold to a dizzying witches’ sabbath. Under the assured direction of Michael Schønwandt, the symphony emerges in all its true power: radical, uncompromising and still dangerously alive.