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Showing posts with the label Hector Berlioz

Music Album Review: 'Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Charles Munch'

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(C) 1962, 1990 RCA Records/RCA Victrola One of my fondest memories from my college days (now almost two decades ago) centers upon the first time I heard Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique:  Épisode de la vie d'un artiste ... en cinq parties .  It was a cool (by South Florida standards) afternoon and I was in my Humanities class. Our professor -- Jay Brown, who aside from being an instructor at Miami-Dade Community College was, and still is, a talented musician who can play various instruments, including the glass harmonica -- touched upon many different topics ranging from epistemology to ethics. But on that day we were discussing music: the transition from the Classical period of Mozart to the Romantic era of Beethoven, Schubert, and Berlioz. More to the point, the topic of the afternoon was the advent of the big orchestra, and the prof played a selection or two from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique:  Épisode de la vie d'un artiste ... en cinq parties  (