Live Broadcast – Radio National Orchestra
Friday, 29 January 2010 , 19.00

Fairytale, romance and colour …with Princess Aurora, Prince Désiré, The Lilac Fairy, The Wicked Fairy Carabosse, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, The Wolf, Cinderella … Fairies for crumbs of bread, spike wheat, heated passions… Fairies for Gold, Sapphire, Silver and Rose diamonds …

…. and sound, the music of Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky in the Suite cut from his second and longest ballet Sleeping Beauty (whose total length is four hours…)

Monumental, spectacular, overwhelming ... that was how Te Deum by Hector Berlioz sounded in the giant Église Saint-Eustache of Paris, on April 30th 1855, in its premiere. Te Deum, which followed the path opened by Messe Solennelle (1825) and Grande Messe des Morts (1837), did not enjoy the same fame as the second work. But, up to this day, it still remains a hallmark of Romanticism, bearing the mark of ‘Berlioz’, in which dimensions become apocalyptic and the tension is simply a raw material forged in the denominations of Hymns or Prayers in its six parts.

A night in which the princesses of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm have a Siberian Snow Queen touch and the musical embodiment of the Last Judgement seems to come down from Christ’s raised arm, painted by Michelangelo in the altar of the Sistine Chapel.