Hector Berlioz — more formally, Louis-Hector Berlioz — was born in 1803. It’s amazing to think of this, given the nature of his music. That birth year seems so early! Berlioz was born just ...

This past weekend, it was a 200-year-old overture. Hector Berlioz’s music is most often heard at Davies Symphony Hall in repeat performances of his “Symphonie Fantastique,” a piece that took ...

Berlioz’s father was a country doctor practising near Grenoble who was musical enough to give his son his first lessons on the flute, though dead set against music as a career. (Later Berlioz took up ...

and the concert ends with the mighty Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz, a wild work which astonished listeners at its first performance in Paris in 1830. Berlioz claimed that his Symphonie ...