Berlioz Carnevale Romano

The San Diego Symphony Orchestra no longer exists, unfortunately, having succumbed to financial pressures after a troubled history. It's a pity, for they were good, as this excellent budget-priced collection of overtures proves. Yoav Talmi keeps the music moving with a sure sense of rhythm, and there's some particularly fine solo woodwind playing in the music's quieter passages. Anyone looking for these pieces can invest in this disc with complete confidence.

Talmi's account offers plenty of interest in any case, even if you're already steeped in performances of the work. This account has plenty of fire and imagination at its best, and at the price it's certainly worth a listen.

In 1999, conductor Daniel Barenboim and scholar Edward Said created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to be a cultural bridge between young Israeli, Arab, and Iranian musicians, and the success of the enterprise has not only raised public awareness of their worthy cause, but also yielded some remarkable recordings. Celebrating the tenth anniversary of the orchestra's formation, Barenboim leads the orchestra in performances of two works linked to the city where the group held its first workshops, Weimar, where associations with Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt are still strong.

John Eliot Gardiner conducts his Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique through two concerts of Berlioz compositions. The 'Symphonie Fantastique' is an orchestral tour de force which is central to the repertoire of every major orchestra. It is performed here on original instruments in its original 1830s orchestration in the atmospheric old hall of the Paris Conservatoire where it was first heard. Also included is the first performance of the newly discovered 'Messe Solennelle' with the Monteverdi choir. Written when Berlioz was just 20 years old, it was thought lost until its rediscovery in 1992. The first performance of this large-scale Mass for 150 years was filmed in London's Westminster Cathedral. Gardiner's period-instrument orchestra gives characteristically idiomatic performances of these seminal works (which are also linked thematically, through Berlioz's extensive re-use of material from the Messe).

Aldo Romano: "In 1959, the "Living Theater", co-directed by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, created the Jack Gelber play "The Connection". This is a play within a play; the producer Jim Dunn, and the writer Jaybird, want to show the unseen of the life of the addicts to hard drugs. They have one thing in common: the expectation of "the connection", we would say the dealer today, which should give them the powder. This is a camera in a slum rented by a crazy man, Leach. There's four or five clueless in need and a jazz quartet that plays waiting for their dealer "Cowboy".
The play, which will become a film directed by Shirley Clarke in 1961, will be performed in New York, London, Los Angeles, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, the Living Theater and a jazz quartet led by pianist Freddie Redd and Jackie McLean on alto sax…

Kiri Te Kanawa does well by these songs, avoiding the billowing excesses of sentiment that in other hands (or vocal chords) can make them sound much too soggy. Although Berlioz gathered them all together under the present title, all of the songs were composed at different times for different singers, so they aren't really a cycle at all. I seldom listen to all of them at once, and you should feel free to take them in any order that suits you. "The Death of Cleopatra" is an early cantata that perfectly suits Jessye Norman's stately delivery. She's always at her best playing royalty, and if they're dying in mortal agony, so much the better.

There’s more to this recording than the best funeral bells and the most focused tuba playing on disc in the finale of the Fantastique. Karajan did not record much Berlioz, but like many German conductors he had a special feeling for this particular work. He recorded it three times, once for EMI and twice for DG, the present version being his last and, on balance, most compelling.

"Clair Obscur (Alpha 727), dedicated to German lieder with orchestra, explored the antagonism between light and shadow. Reflet conjures up the nuances and transparencies of French melodies. There is in reflection the idea of an echo, the shadow of a disquieting double, of a plural, diffracted sparkle… A clash of deceptive mirages, a kaleidoscope of senses and flashes of light, it interweaves in strange parallels the score of our lives, adorned with gold and illusions", writes Sandrine Piau.