Program
BOULANGER Marche gaie
POULENC Gloria
BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Featured Artists
Eun Sun Kim, conductor
Colorado Symphony Chorus, Taylor Martin, director
Heidi Stober, soprano
Description
Surprises await you at every turn as the dazzling Eun Sun Kim leads the orchestra through works by three visionary French composers, a sweeping journey from radiant joy to sacred intensity to the feverish depths of Romantic obsession. The program’s energy radiates from the start, sparked by Lili Boulanger’s Marche gaie — a compact burst of brilliance from a composer whose remarkable voice was silenced far too soon. Poulenc’s Gloria is one of the composer’s most beloved works, alternating between sacred sincerity and unexpected flashes of playfulness while celebrating the human spirit in all its contradictions. With soprano Heidi Stober and the Colorado Symphony Chorus, the work reveals Poulenc at his most human — joyful, solemn, irreverent, and deeply moving.
Yet that emotional generosity serves only as a prelude to the supernatural sweep of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, a work epic in scale and ambition. Drawing on a recurrent melodic theme, Berlioz dives headlong into a fever-dream narrative shaped by obsession, ecstasy, hallucination, and despair. His own self-destructive passions are laid bare as the music hurtles toward a programmatic finale that will leave the hall charged with the unmistakable thrill of orchestral storytelling at its most vivid.
Prelude: Join us before the concert to dive deeper into the music, this weekend with Assistant Principal Viola Catherine Beeson at 6:30 PM (FRI & SAT) and 12:00 PM (SUN).
Talkback: After the performance on SAT, APR 17 join Conductor Eun Sun Kim and Soprano Heidi Stober for a peak behind the curtain.
