Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Mahler didn’t live to complete anything more than the opening Adagio of his Symphony No. 10, but what he left takes the audience on a powerful voyage filled with pathos, including one of the most truly heart-wrenching and terrifying moments in all symphonic music. Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique takes the listener on a compelling journey as well—what Bernstein called “the first psychedelic music trip.” Berlioz uses kaleidoscopic orchestral colors in a phantasmagoric tale of madness to depict an opium overdose, hallucinations of murder and execution, and a macabre Witches’ Sabbath.