Summary: Welcome to this digital edition of Phillip Huscher's Program Notes for upcoming concerts by the CSO December 5-7. Shostakovich's powerful First Violin Concerto, which was composed in secrecy during the final years of Stalin's tyranny, expresses the fear and fury of a composer suffering pervasive repression by Soviet authority. Its imaginative character is more than matched by Berlioz's extraordinary Symphonie fantastique, from its sumptuous ball-scene with a haunting waltz melody to the evil howls and cackles of its witches' Sabbath.
