Hector Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique

Immensely influential, the remarkable Symphonie fantastique was composed while Hector Berlioz was suffering an intense and unreciprocated passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Its autobiographical tale describes a young musician’s opium-poisoned nightmares of jealous despair and fatal justice following the murder of his beloved. Berlioz wrote a second movement cornet solo into a subsequent revision of the score, here included as an optional extra. He wed his sweetheart actress but, recuperating in Nice, wrote Le corsaire after the final break-up of their marriage.

The large collection of antique instruments at Les Siècles' command makes its recordings more than just speculative period exercises, but something approaching musical time travel. Led since 2003 by its founder, François-Xavier Roth, this singular French orchestra has given thrilling historically-informed recreations of the repertoire of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries on vintage instruments that were available to the musicians of the time, crafted by hand, and possessing the unique sonorities and tunings of different regions.

‘Muti can suggest a sensibility driven to the edge of sanity by its nightmare,’ wrote Gramophone of this intense interpretation of Berlioz’s visionary Symphonie fantastique, judging it among the finest recordings of the work and praising the conductor’s mastery at ‘holding the thread of argument together firmly, while never minimizing the incidental excitement’.

Berlioz's most familiar work is almost impossible to conduct with a fresh approach or to hear with fresh ears. I am grateful to this masterful Russian conductor, who has total control over the orchestra, for renewing my love of the Symphonie fantastique. Except for portions of the waltz in Un Bal that Temirkanov plays too straight, almost every bar is infused with unusual phrasing, balance, and pace. The last two movements are rambunctious and visceral. The pastoral third movement is very slow but so controlled and perfectly phrased that it held my attention throughout. It and the first movement are high points. If you want an unusal Ftantastique that owes nothing to French tradition, this one with a Russian accent is well worth hearing.

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.

Maestro Dutoit and his orchestra really make Berlioz' orchestral showpiece glow in all of its colorful splendour, but with enough tenderness and warm lyricism in the more reflective, dreamy parts. But 'Un bal' really sways and swaggers with appropriate grandiloquence. The 'Scene aux champs' is played wonderfully poised and concentrated, but with a lot of warmth as well, helped of course by the mellifluous, wonderfully blended tone of the orchestra.

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.