Customer Reviews

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique Overtures; Roman Carnival; Beatrice and Benedict (RCA Victor Basic 100, Vol. 24)

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Contrary to popular belief, this recording is not the one Charles Munch made in the 1950's, but a re-recording made by the same forces in the early 1960's.

This was my first "Fantastique", recommended by Martin Bookspan in his book "101 Masterpieces of Music and Their Composers". I was overcome by Berlioz's inspiration, and shocked by the 1830 premiere date. No wonder many musicologists believe this work was the beginning of modern orchestration.

Although this performance is less tidy in ensemble when compared to Munch's earlier account, it has the kind of fire and excitment that leaves one drained by the finish. No other account of the final movement tops this one, with the orchestra clearly on the edge of their seats.

True, this recording may not be for everyone, and preference may lean towards Previn, Muti, Beecham, Gardiner, or Davis. But this performance must be heard alongside the other great recordings.

I don't know much about Charles Munch, probably because he was less know than such giants at the time including Eugene Ormandy and Fritz Reiner, but once I heard this performance of Berlioz's crowning achievement, I couldn't agree more that it gave such "fiery excitement" (High Fidelity).

The final two movements - March to the Scaffold and Sabbath Night - are an absolute MUST!!! Nailbiting high tempo and a brilliant "cheer" in the March, and a power-pack of musical images of monsters and demons - from the swooping cackle of the witches from the strings - to the high-pitched "church" bells cold as ice - to the Dies Irae played by the low brass and winds full of character (the vibrato and the blend really makes a satire out of this infamous chant) - all portrayed in Sabbath Night.

Even though the sound quality is really dated and certainly not at its cleanest, but still no other performance could be as elecrtifying as this one. Go for it!!!

I believe most listeners who have not been imprinted on the more famous earlier mid 50s recording by Munch and the BSO would prefer this one. The sonics to my ears are even slightly better than the SACD release of the 54' recording. In this recording, especially from the 4th movement on, the orchestral playing is more intense and visceral - more intense also than that of the recordings by Davis/Concertgebouw or Beecham/French National (my second favorite). The brass in particular in the earlier Munch recording sounds anemic in comparison. However, if how the bells are played out in this music is of great importance to you, you may want the 54' Munch over this one. They sound more gripping and interesting in that recording.

Readers might miss the correction made down below, which catches David Hurwitz in a blooper: this isn't Munch's 1954 recording of Symphonie fantastique, now reissued on both Living Stereo and hybrid SACD. This is his remake from 1962, and although it is recognizably the same basic performance, there are important differences.

First is the sound: the 1954 recording is more spacious and features closer, more detailed capture of solo instruments--just test the harp at the beginning of Un Bal. Second, Munch had become marginally slower, but that's not as important as the fact that his rhythm and accents feel looser. The BSO doesn't play quite as well, either, having become used to Munch's lax demands for ensemble. So good as this reading is, one can hear its more beautiful twin in better sound.

This is a famous recording. Munch takes all sorts of liberties with tempi, yet no-one - Bernstein included - has managed to give this extraordinary musical unity without sacrificing excitement. Given that it represents one of the most frenetic, febrile expressions of hallucinogenic, drug-induced hyper-sensitivity that the Romantic Movement affords, it would seem prosaic in the extreme to demur at Munch's agogic freedom, especially when he conjures such ravishing sounds from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He gives this pulsating music an entirely absorbing sense of purpose, yet nothing seems calculated; even the most extreme rubato or accelerando serves the underlying architectural conception.

The vividness of the sound also reveals that of accelerating vehicles in the background and every creak of the floor. While the 1954 version made with the same forces on stereo reel-to-reel tape is in some ways even more daring and propulsive, on balance this 1962 stereo re-make is marginally preferable both in terms of sound and interpretation, although I would not go to the stake defending either against the other.

The opening of the first movement is weighty, soulful and impassioned before launching into the yearning, headlong passion over Berlioz's own "Eternal Beloved". Here, more than any where else, Munch plays fast and loose with the beat but it works. In the second movement, "Un bal", the waltz time is a little more measured than in the 1954 recording but if anything even more charged with erotic intensity. The "Scène au champs" avoids the longueurs which lesser conductors engender, and the exquisite tuning of the Boston strings makes magic as that glorious bucolic theme, so reminiscent of Beethoven's "Pastoral", blooms expansively. In contrast to the freedom he employs elsewhere, Munch at first holds the "Marche au supplice" to a very steady beat, before gradually ratcheting up the tempo and tension and building ominously to a superb decapitation. The "Songe d'une nuit de sabbat" again pulses steadily and inexorably before the chimes usher in the weird, pounding tread of the Dies Irae and the syncopated frenzy of the demonic dance. This is one of the great Berlioz recordings, beyond doubt.

You will never here the Symphonie Fantastique sound as wonderful as it sounds here, under Munch with the Boston Symphony.

"warhorse" classical music afficionada's slang for piece of
classical music oft played by live orchestras, or simply
a communally (among classical music buffs) well known
selection of music... 5 mvts.. 5 movements..

idee fixe in first
waltz form, second movement
english horn - oboe conversation, 3
4
5 bells, e flat clarrinet solos, trombone, brass and
bell.. music used with out bell in soundtrack intro
riding in the car to mount pluto the dog, mount
Theodore Roosevelt.. eg. (for example), the opening
credits of the movie, _The Shining_ by Stanley Kubrick

Best listened to with a Kalmus miniature score which is a pbk
(paperback) orchestral score, (all five movements always
included.

Kalmus musical scores...

WOBC FM oberlin, WKLV sanfrancisco..

Sid Gillman your moderator and host this evening,
WOBC class of '67

mgm.comp.mgm

spotter,
coastwatcher in place,
truk island, south pacific

reg. penna dept. agric.