Mercury Orchestra performs Stravinsky and Berlioz July 17, 2010

The Mercury Orchestra presents two highly colorful and evocative showpieces for symphony orchestra: Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Stravinsky’s score for the ballet Petrushka, commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, uses a tapestry of Russian folk tunes to conjure the brilliant sights and sounds of a local carnival where puppets seem to possess real lives of their own. Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, subtitled “An Episode in the Life of an Artist,” has held audiences under its spell for almost two hundred years, with its vivid exploration of a young man’s obsessive dreams and hallucinations of his beloved.

Official Website: http://www.mercuryorchestra.org