成人快手

鈥楾his is how life feels right now.鈥�
鈥� Julia Wolfe

Wolfe was two blocks from the Twin Towers when the planes hit on September 11, 2001. Big Beautiful Dark and Scary is the sound of that aftermath: an ominous, awesome wall of sound. When he wrote his Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky was also recuperating from personal turmoil: after a collapsed marriage and a failed suicide attempt, he escaped to the shores of Lake Geneva. In the company of a violinist muse 鈥� Josef Kotek 鈥� Tchaikovsky created a concerto of romance, peace and jollity, and a celebrated classic of the repertoire.

Personal suffering is distant in Tchaikovsky鈥檚 concerto, but front-and-centre of Hector Berlioz鈥檚 Symphonie fantastique. Originally titled 鈥楨pisodes in the Life of an Artist鈥�, this 鈥渇antastic symphony in five parts鈥� follows the tribulations of a gifted artist who, out of an unrequited love for a woman, falls into a deep malaise, and travels through opium-addled hallucinations. High drama.