Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (Duration: 10 minutes)
Claude Debussy
Symphony No. 31, "Paris" (Duration: 22 minutes)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
IntermissionSymphonie Fantastique, Op. 14 (Duration: 49 minutes)
Hector Berlioz
Former Eugene Symphony Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero returns for a night of musical brilliance and vivid storytelling! Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun opens with sensual, dreamlike melodies that transport you to a world of fantasy. Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 “Paris” sparkles with elegance and youthful energy, leading to the evening’s grand finale—Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, a wild and electrifying journey of love, obsession, and fate. Don’t miss this unforgettable homecoming!
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Watch the full video here.
Berlioz’s own program note for Symphonie Fantastique
A young musician of morbidly sensitive temperament and fiery imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of lovesick despair. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a deep slumber accompanied by the strangest visions, during which his sensations, his emotions, his memories are transformed in his sick mind into musical thoughts and images. The loved one herself has become a melody to him, an idée fixe as it were, that he encounters and hears everywhere.
Part I—Reveries, Passions
He recalls first that soul-sickness, that vague des passions, those depressions, those groundless joys, that he experienced before he first saw his loved one; then the volcanic love that she suddenly inspired in him, his frenzied suffering, his jealous rages, his returns to tenderness, his religious consolations.
Part II—A Ball
He encounters the loved one at a dance in the midst of the tumult of a brilliant party.
Part III—Scene in the Country
One summer evening in the country, he hears two shepherds piping a ranz des vaches in dialogue; this pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently brushed by the wind, the hopes he has recently found some reason to entertain—all concur in affording his heart an unaccustomed calm, and in giving a more cheerful color to his ideas. But she appears again, he feels a tightening in his heart, painful presentiments disturb him—what if she were deceiving him?—One of the shepherds takes up his simple tune again, the other no longer answers. The sun sets—distant sound of thunder—loneliness—silence.
Part IV—March to the Scaffold
He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to the scaffold. The procession moves forward to the sounds of a march that is now somber and fierce, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled sound of heavy steps gives way without transition to the noisiest clamor. At the end, the idée fixe returns for a moment, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.
Part V—Dream of a Witches' Sabbath
He sees himself at the sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troop of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind, come together for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved’s melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it is no more than a dance tune, mean, trivial, and grotesque: it is she, coming to join the sabbath.—A roar of joy at her arrival.—She takes part in the devilish orgy.—Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, sabbath round-dance. The sabbath round and the Dies irae combined.
Arrive early on January 15 for the free Guild Legacy Pre-Concert Talk featuring Giancarlo Guerrero interviewed by Executive Director Dave Moss. The talk begins at 6:30 PM in the Hult Center Studio - located downstairs from the lobby. All ticket-holders are welcome.
