Thierry Fischer and Utah Symphony's All-Berlioz Album Released by Hyperion Records

Today marks the release of Music Director Thierry Fischer and the Utah Symphony's new all-Berlioz album on Hyperion Records. The recording features a varied selection from Berlioz's oeuvre, including his best-known work, Symphonie fantastique. The album also includes Rêverie et caprice for violin and orchestra, recorded with Philippe Quint when he was the orchestra's Artist-in-Association, and two poetry settings for orchestra and chorus, La mort d'Ophélie and Sara la baigneuse, which were recorded with the Utah Symphony Chorus and University of Utah Chamber Choir. Orders are now available via Hyperion Records and retailers including Amazon and iTunes.

A passionate devotee of the French repertoire, Mr. Fischer said:

"One reason I love Berlioz's music so much is because he expresses himself so directly, with no ambiguity about the fears and hopes that are driving his thought. His feelings seem to flow straight from his heart to the musical page."

Symphonie fantastique is the work with which Mr. Fischer made his Utah Symphony debut in October 2007, two years before becoming Music Director. He describes the symphony as "an emotional diary of a man in his mid-20s who has recently left his provincial home and is now in the city discovering life with all its feelings of struggle, failure, solitude, loneliness. It's a vivid account of these universal human emotions as experienced by a young man in 1830."

The remaining works on the recording are less frequently performed, and by including them, Mr. Fischer and the Utah Symphony offer listeners a richer and more complex picture of Berlioz and his music. Rêverie et caprice is an 1841 concertante transcription of an aria originally composed by Berlioz for his opera Benvenuto Cellini, but omitted by the composer from the final score. La mort d'Ophélie is the second of three pieces for chorus and orchestra published together under the title Tristia in 1852. A setting of a ballade by Ernest Legouvé, La mort d'Ophélie is described in the album liner notes as a lament for Berlioz's relationship with Harriet Smithson, an actress who had won his affection while portraying Ophelia in Hamlet, and who served as the inspiration for Symphonie fantastique. Sara la baigneuse sets a poem by Victor Hugo and was composed in 1834 while Berlioz was living in Montmartre. The cover art for the present recording is another interpretation of Hugo's poem, painted by Jean-Jacques Henner in 1903.

In exploring the music of Berlioz with the Utah Symphony, Thierry Fischer builds on a rich, career-long engagement with the French repertoire-from classics by Debussy and Ravel to contemporary works by Pierre Boulez and Tristan Murail. Last year, Hyperion released his and the Utah Symphony's complete, three-volume Saint-Saëns symphony cycle, and of his 14 prior albums for the label, over half are devoted to works by Francophone composers, including Fauré, Françaix, Honegger, d'Indy, Lalo, Martin, Poulenc, and Widor. In concert this season, he leads the Utah Symphony in a season-long exploration of Messiaen's Des canyons aux étoiles, a twelve-movement work inspired by the birds and rugged features of southern Utah. They will record the work this spring for future release on Hyperion.