From the CSO’s Archives: The First 130 Years

Liszt & Berlioz

October 27, 2020 — 1 hr 45 min listen

CSO Percussion James Ross plays the offstage bells during Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique in 2014

It’s almost Halloween! Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain opens this program, followed by Rachmaninov’s The Isle of the Dead and Liszt’s Totentanz. Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, complete with a March to the Scaffold and hallucinatory Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath, brings the program to a close.

Mussorgsky A Night on Bald Mountain
Seiji Ozawa conductor
August 1968 (RCA)

Rachmaninov The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29
Fritz Reiner conductor
April 1957 (RCA)

Liszt Totentanz for Piano and Orchestra
Fritz Reiner conductor
Byron Janis piano
February 1959 (RCA)

Sibelius Valse triste, Op. 44, No. 1
Frederick Stock conductor
December 1925 (Victor)

Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Claudio Abbado conductor
February 1983 (Deutsche Grammophon)

From the CSO’s Archives: The First 130 Years—featuring recordings from the CSO’s vast discography, including releases on CSO Resound—is a cultural and community partnership between the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and WFMT, Chicago’s Classical Music Station.

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