Pierre Bleuse conducts Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique — With Paul Lewis

Two of the most evocative masterpieces of the Romantic and pre-Romantic eras make for a breathless double header as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra joins forces with conductor Pierre Bleuse and pianist Paul Lewis! First up is a new SSO commission by Singaporean composer and yangqin player Koh Cheng Jin, Midnight Visions, whose nocturnal atmosphere hints at the concert's diabolical finale to come. The prolific and brilliant Paul Lewis then takes on Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto No. 5, one of the noblest and most majestic concertos ever composed, and a surefire sign that the Classicism of Beethoven's earlier works were making way for the grand scope and emotional sweep of Romanticism. The program ends, fittingly, with a headlong dive into one of the Romantic era's programmatic works par excellence, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, which outlines the tragic fate of an artist whose unrequited love leads to existential torment and, finally, a nightmarish and vision of occult debauchery.