Glière’s Harp Concerto with Xavier de Maistre presented by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra tickets

French harpist Xavier de Maistre performs Glière’s stunning Harp Concerto, before Umberto Clerici leads us through Berlioz’s orchestral masterpiece Symphonie fantastique.

Glière’s music unfolds in long, glowing lines, reminiscent of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. In the hands of Xavier de Maistre, who ‘plays the harp with infinite finesse and much delicacy of colour’ (Gramophone), it’s an unmissable event.

Then Berlioz loses his mind. Magnificently.

In Symphonie fantastique, we’re dropped into the opium-induced fever dream of a lovesick artist: five movements, each one stranger than the last. A glittering ballroom. A march to the guillotine. And finally, a witches’ Sabbath. A sensation at its premiere and still thrilling all these years later.