Berlioz moved the symphony into something altogether more like story-telling. That's not to say that Beethoven didn't tell stories through his music – for example, he did it in the Pastoral symphony – ...

For sheer musical fearlessness - the willingness to explode the traditional boundaries of form and harmony, the eagerness to make a huge impact through innovative approaches - Hector Berlioz is ...

The Music: Commissioned in 1837 by the French Minister of the Interior, Berlioz’s monumental requiem setting was intended to commemorate soldiers supportive of the winning side in the July revolution ...

In 1837 that wild romantic Hector Berlioz was asked to compose a Mass for the dead, to mark the anniversary of the 1830 July Revolution. The result, performed in the huge space of Les Invalides in ...

During his lifetime, composer Hector Berlioz (1803-69) was the great outsider of French music. Though as composer and conductor he achieved popularity in Germany, England and even Russia ...

Tom Service meets the conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, one of the UK's biggest champions for Berlioz and his music. Nicholas Collon also joins Tom to examine Berlioz's pioneering use of the ...