Our Tobias Westman sings Hector Berlioz's Lélio with Helsingborgs Symfoniorkester May 21

HSO – Pascal's Passion Finale – The Power of Art with Berlioz Welcome to a dark, brave and absolutely fantastic season finale! We open the doors to an unusually moving season finale – an evening where passion is given free rein and art is at the center! Maxime Pascal guides us through Hector Berlioz's two monumental works: the dramatic Symphonie Fantastique and the rarely heard sequel Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie. Prepare for a musical experience containing everything from the depths of horror and nightmare to the triumph of liberation. Symphonie Fantastique (1830) is not only one of the most colorful program symphonies in music history (i.e., where the music has a plot), but also an autobiographical work. Here we follow the young composer Lélio's journey from romantic love to devastating hallucinations in which he sees himself beheaded in his opium intoxication. The work reflects Berlioz's own unhappy love for the actress Harriet Smithson, whose feelings he could not win. The music depicts an artist's inner struggle and dissolution – a horror film in sound, filled with nightmares and horrific images. But it doesn’t end there, thankfully. In Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie (1832), the composer Lélio wakes up from his intoxication. Instead of getting stuck in despair, he chooses a different path – art, and thus, music. Lélio is precisely a tribute to music as a healing force, a path beyond heartache and despair. In this work, which alternates between music and monologue, the young composer is allowed to reflect on his ability to rise from the darkness and find new meaning. To hear both Symphonie Fantastique and Lélio in the same concert is a rare experience – a dramatic journey from despair to liberation and from night-black doom to the triumph of light. In Lélio, Berlioz explains that art – and above all music – has the power to heal and renew, and to give us hope for a future even after the greatest difficulties.