Seeing a live symphony is one of life’s greatest pleasures. The USC Thornton Symphony gifted that pleasure to a full audience in a two-part program in Bovard Auditorium on Friday. As  part of the Thornton Signature Series, the students, led by conductor Carl St.Clair, played “breathe/burn: an elegy” by Joel Thompson and “Deux mélodies hébraïques: Kaddisch” by Maurice Ravel before a brief intermission and then resumed the night of live music by playing all five movements of Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique, op.14.”

The evening was well-attended by people of all ages and backgrounds. Parents, friends and general appreciators of classical music were laden with flowers and other gifts for the performers. Bovard looked stunning, with soft red and yellow lights drifting across the walls. As the evening began and the lights dimmed, the warm wooden colors of the instruments stood out among the students in their classy concert blacks.

Thornton School of Music Dean Jason King began the evening with some short remarks. He has only been dean for less than two years, but he said within that time, he has come to appreciate the depth and breadth of the Thornton school and all its talented students.

The student’s talent and dedication were immediately exhibited as the first half of the night began. Seth Parker Woods, the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music, took the stage alongside conductor St.Clair. Woods played the cello for both pieces and introduced the first two works as ones connected by ruminations on grief and loss.

Joel Thompson composed “breathe/burn: an elegy” after the death of Breonna Taylor in 2020. Woods said the piece explores not just the sadness of a life taken too soon, but also the simultaneous love and rage of the people who cared for her and continue to care for the entire Black community. He paired this with Maurice Ravel’s “Deux mélodies hébraïques: Kaddisch” to honor those who have been lost by having a community remember them all together.

He advised the crowd at Bovard to have these considerations in mind before he sat down and began “breathe/burn: an elegy” as a solo cellist. Soon enough, the students joined the performance. This first piece was extremely emotional and held the entire crowd enraptured as it soared through great highs and settled in deep lows. It had a frantic, angry energy that built throughout it, but it also measured itself between love and rage and peace and chaos.

Woods led the symphony in the very front, his red-and-black patterned shirt a stark contrast to the concert blacks of the students, and the audience could see the emotion on his face as he put his heart and soul into his performance.

The symphony continued with “Deux mélodies hébraïques: Kaddisch,” and Woods again began the piece solo. There was a definite contrast between the two, partially due to their dates of composition, as Ravel’s work was composed in 1914.

Nevertheless, the symphony performed it with the same grace and elegance as “breathe/burn: an elegy.” It had a somber, religious tone, and it encouraged thoughtfulness in the audience. The pairing of the two pieces was inspired; Woods succeeded in drawing out the similarities between the two so that the audience could reflect in community on how music communicates grief and contemplation.

A brief intermission followed these first two pieces before the symphony again took the stage. This time, Carl St.Clair introduced Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique, op. 14.” He highlighted the visionary nature of the work, and described some of Berlioz’s innovations in composition, such as the “idée fixe” — or fixed idea — a recurring musical motif throughout the work that highlights a specific idea. In this case, Berlioz’s idée fixe was that of his unrequited love for Irish actress Harriet Smithson.

St.Clair’s context was extremely helpful in illuminating the work’s uniqueness. Moreover, different symphony members introduced each movement using Berlioz’s original program notes.

The talent of the symphony shined through the brightest in its impassioned performance of Berlioz’s work. St.Clair led them brilliantly; his seemingly endless energy and physical stage presence gave the piece a strong sense of immediacy, yet he measured his actions so he wouldn’t overtake the symphony’s extremely tight performance.

The first movement, where the lover is overtaken by his emotions, felt like watching the waves at the beach. The music rolled and crashed repeatedly and the audience never knew what to expect next. Still, the lightness of the piece communicated the life-changing power of love.

However, the chaotic and dramatic progression of the fourth and fifth movements balanced the levity of the first movement. Within these last two movements, the lover has attempted to overdose on opium but fails and has instead slipped into a coma where he sees visions of his unrequited love at a gauche pagan dance.

The symphony performed these movements with an awe-inspiring level of passion. The violinists moved fluidly and frantically with their instruments as they leaned into the drama of the ending, and the winds section added a much-needed heaviness to the sadness and intensity of Berlioz’s visionary work.

At the end, the symphony received a minutes-long standing ovation from the crowd. As some people rushed for the door, others made for the stage to hand over their gifts and personally congratulate their loved ones. Free events like this one make it easy for any USC student to immerse themselves in the heartfelt emotion of the classical world, and in the world-class talent of their fellow students.