Proms 2026 Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie fantastique’

Does the Devil really have all the best tunes? When it comes to classical music, he just might. Thomas Adès conducts the National Youth Orchestra – over 150 of Britain’s most talented teenagers – in a thrilling musical journey to Hell and back. Follow Faust into the irresistible, whirling dance of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1; contemplate Purgatory, ‘a sort of pre-dawn, before the sun of Paradise’, in Purgatorio – the central panel of Adès’s own Grammy Award- winning, Dante-inspired ballet; and surrender to the vast soundscapes and phantasmagoria of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, culminating in a horrifying ‘Witches’ Sabbath’.

Recorded for broadcast on BBC TV and BBC iPlayer

Thomas Adès © Mathias Benguigui