If you’ve recovered from the fiddlers of the Dauphiné, my main passions in French music are for Ravel and Messiaen, not forgetting Rameau and Debussy, Michel Legrand, Françoise Hardy, and Barbara Pravi. But Berlioz makes guest appearances on this site too:

• Berlioz and the not-so-Mystic East
• Symphonie fantastique: Musical joke-dating and Hector moves furniture
• Nuits d’été—Janet Baker’s gorgeous 1967 recording with Barbirolli, under Killing Eve.

And I just recalled the pleasures of playing Berlioz’s “dramatic symphony” Roméo et Juliette with John Eliot Gardiner in 1995. Here he conducts it complete at the 2016 Proms—long after my time:

The Scène d’amour is enchanting—I’m also attached to Esa-Pekka Salonen, as much for his wise and forensic conducting as for the wonderful story of his interview for the LA Phil job, so here’s a 2023 concert:

While our EBS repertoire with Gardiner revolved around Bach, Handel, and Mozart, pieces of later early music that I enjoyed playing with him and the ORR include the Brahms German Requiem and Verdi’s Four sacred pieces.