CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Orchestra’s recording of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, led by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, is now available worldwide for digital streaming and download in spatial audio on all major platforms.
This recording was initially released on Apple Music Classical in September as part of a partnership between Apple Music and The Cleveland Orchestra. It was recorded live at Severance Music Center on May 2, 3, and 4, 2024.
This year marks the centennial year of The Cleveland Orchestra’s first-ever recording: a shortened version of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, conducted by the Orchestra’s first Music Director, Nikolai Sokoloff, and released in 1924. Since then, the Orchestra has consistently been among the most acclaimed and recorded in the world, receiving eight Grammy Awards and many international prize ratings.
Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is the fourth recording released by The Cleveland Orchestra in 2024, following Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 3 (arranged for double string orchestra by Cleveland Orchestra Assistant Principal Viola Stanley Konopka) and his Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 6, and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4.
Learn more about 100 years of Cleveland Orchestra recordings here.
Media Reviewing Access
Access to the recording’s audio files for media reviewing is available upon request. Album cover art, digital booklet, and high-resolution images can be found in the press kit.
Product Information
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Hector Berlioz (1803-1896)
Track 1 – I. Reveries — Passions: Largo — Allegro agitato e appassionato assai
Track 2 – II. A Ball: Allegro non troppo
Track 3 – III. In the Country: Adagio
Track 4 – IV. March to the Scaffold: Allegretto non troppo
Track 5 – V. Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath: Larghetto
Audio Production
Elaine Martone, Recording Producer
Gintas Norvila, Recording, Editing, and Mixing Engineer
Jennifer Nulsen, Stereo Mastering Engineer
Alan JS Han, Immersive Mixing Engineer
About Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (by Hugh Macdonald)
One has only to read Berlioz’s letters from 1829 to glimpse the torment of a composer whose mind was bursting with musical ideas and whose heart was bleeding.
The object of his passion was Irish actress Harriet Smithson, whom Berlioz had seen on the stage two years before in the roles of Juliet and Ophelia. Since then, he had viewed her only at a distance, while she was still unaware of his existence. How was this all-consuming passion to be expressed?
The dilemma was resolved early in 1830 when he suddenly realized he could represent this dramatic episode in his life as a program symphony, with a demonic, orgiastic finale in which both he and she are condemned to hell. The symphony was speedily written down in little more than three months and performed for the first time later that year. Even after Berlioz had, by a strange irony, met and married Smithson three years later — it was not a happy union, however — the symphony’s dramatic program remained.
All five movements contain a single recurrent musical theme, the idée fixe, or obsession, which represents the artist’s love and is transformed according to the context in which the artist finds his beloved. After a slow introduction (Reveries), the idée fixe is heard as the main theme of the opening movement’s Allegro section (Passions).
In the second movement (A Ball), the artist glimpses his beloved amidst a crowd of whirling dancers. Throughout the third movement (In the Country), two shepherds call to each other on their pipes, with the music depicting the stillness of a summer evening, the artist’s passionate melancholy, and his agitation caused by the beloved’s appearance.
In his despair, the artist has poisoned his beloved and is condemned to death. The fourth movement portrays the March to the Scaffold, as he is led to the guillotine before the raucous jeers of the crowd. In his last moments, he sees the beloved’s image before the blade falls.
In the final movement (Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath), the artist finds himself a spectator at a sinister gathering of specters and weird, mocking monsters of every kind. The idée fixe appears — horribly distorted by the high-pitched E-flat clarinet — bells toll, and the religious Dies irae (Day of wrath) chant is coarsely intoned by bassoons and tubas. The witches’ round-dance gathers momentum before the symphony ends in a riot of brilliant orchestral sound.
About The Cleveland Orchestra
Now firmly in its second century, The Cleveland Orchestra, under the leadership of Franz Welser-Möst since 2002, is one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world. Year after year the ensemble exemplifies extraordinary artistic excellence, creative programming, and community engagement. In recent years, The New York Times has called Cleveland “the best in America” for its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color, and chamber-like musical cohesion.
Founded by Adella Prentiss Hughes, the Orchestra performed its inaugural concert in December 1918. By the middle of the century, decades of growth and sustained support had turned the ensemble into one of the most admired around the world.
The past decade has seen an increasing number of young people attending concerts, bringing fresh attention to The Cleveland Orchestra’s legendary sound and committed programming. More recently, the Orchestra launched several bold digital projects, including the streaming platform Adella.live and its own recording label. Together, they have captured the Orchestra's unique artistry and the musical achievements of the Welser-Möst and Cleveland Orchestra partnership.
The 2024–25 season marks Franz Welser-Möst’s 23rd year as Music Director, a period in which The Cleveland Orchestra has earned unprecedented acclaim around the world, including a series of residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of its kind by an American orchestra, and a number of acclaimed opera presentations.
Since 1918, seven music directors — Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst — have guided and shaped the ensemble’s growth and sound. Through concerts at home and on tour, broadcasts, and a catalog of acclaimed recordings, The Cleveland Orchestra is heard today by a growing group of fans around the world. Find out more.
About Franz Welser-Möst
For 23 years, Franz Welser-Möst has shaped an unmistakable sound culture as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. Under his leadership, the Orchestra has been repeatedly praised by international critics for its musical excellence, continued its strong commitment to new music, and brought opera back to the stage of Severance Music Center. Through innovation and cooperation, the Orchestra also founded its own streaming platform (Adella.live) and now has one of the youngest audiences in the US.
In addition to residencies in the US, Europe, and China, Welser-Möst and the Orchestra are regular guests at all the major international festivals. Welser-Möst will remain Music Director until 2027, making him the longest-serving music director of The Cleveland Orchestra.
Welser-Möst enjoys a particularly close and productive artistic partnership with the Vienna Philharmonic. He regularly conducts the orchestra in subscription concerts at the Vienna Musikverein, at the Salzburg Festival, and on tour in Europe, Japan, China, and the US, and has appeared three times on the podium for their celebrated New Year’s Concert (2011, 2013, and 2023). At the Salzburg Festival, Welser-Möst has set new standards in interpretation as an opera conductor, with a special focus on the operas of Richard Strauss.
Welser-Möst has been the recipient of several major honors and awards, including the Honorary Membership of the Vienna Philharmonic, bestowed upon him in 2024.
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Media Contacts:
(United States)
Christophe Abi-Nassif, The Cleveland Orchestra, cabinassif@clevelandorchestra.com, 216-231-7441
Jen Steer, The Cleveland Orchestra, jsteer@clevelandorchestra.com, 216-231-7637
Amanda Ameer, First Chair Promotion, amanda@firstchairpromo.com, 212-368-5949
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