Customer Reviews

Symphonie Fantastique / Hungarian March

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This classic from 1960 is among Paul Paray's best recorded efforts, and that is at dizzying heights.

The artist sticks to the score closely, yet utilizes the wide range of the conductor's art to mesmerizing effect. The waltz is demonic, the Sabbath manaical, the reveries and passions neurotic to the point that we have a portrait of Berlioz himself with all his obsessions. Paray is really the only conductor to give us all this and not have the work run away from him.

Throughout, the Detroit Symphony revels in its virtuosity, with power to burn, tossing off wind passages in particular as if they were bon-mots.

For my taste, this is one of the finest Berlioz recordings of all time.

My unacknowledged review from a few years ago is still a reflection of how I hear and see this superlative accomplishment by Paray.

But there's a little more I'd like to offer. Recently I ran across his 1948 version on old Vox vinyl with the Colonne Orchestra. The results are remarkably similar, the Colonne rather fizzier due to playing styles, the Detroit precise and capable of more light and shadow gradations due to impeccable sound. It's beyond me why De Lys in its compendium "Paul Paray: the Paris Years" declines to include the '48 Fantastique, but instead includes the Saint Saens Cto 2 with Darre already issued on a Pathe memorial to the pianist.

As for Colin Davis's releases: do those who praise such obviously inferior offerings really listen to anything else or research anything they critique? If you examine the standard published scores, you find perfunctory attention or outright alterations in the British conductor's issues (can't he or his players COUNT consistently?) because the resulting slop induces shag and shake that is intolerable set against Paray's scrupulous care, communication, and achievement.

This will remain THE recorded monument to Berlioz's creative stature for another 40 years.

This almost impossible-to-find recording of the Berlioz "Symphonie Fantastique" is in a class all it's own. I own quite a few recordings of this wonderful symphony (and some are quite good) but none of them has the fire and excitement of this classic Mercury Living Presence issue. The recording dates back to 1959 and sounds amazing in it's clarity. Toward the beginning of the 5th movement "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath" you can actually hear the entrance of the idee fixe theme played by the solo E-flat clarinet. In most recordings this solo starts much too quietly, but here the theme is plump and proud in all it's naughtiness! This is one example of many such orchestral details that are astounding. You can tell that Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony are just relishing playing this symphony. The emotion and drive from the beginning until the end never lets up. To make this "collector's disc" (if you are lucky enough to find a copy) even more appealing is the generous addition of The Hungarian March, Trojan March, Corsair Overture, and Roman Carnival Overture. All played with the same brillance as in the symphony.
I have a feeling that this CD may be out of print, which makes no sense given it's excellence coupled with the fact that this year marks the 200th anniversary of Berlioz' birth. Perhaps Mercury/Philips will re-release it. Hope so. I had to go to my library to find it. Good luck, it's worth the effort.
My Strongest Recommendation.

UPDATE: This SUPERB recording is back in circulation as a SACD. I just received my copy today, at a great price. It never sounded better!!! GO FOR IT!!!!!

Of all the performances of Berlioz's visionary symphony that I've heard (all of Davis's, Chung, Gardiner, and others) this one is my favorite. It boasts tempi markedly faster than most versions, and with the amazing agility of the Detroit Symphony, the result is pure exhilaration. As with most Mercury Living Presence discs, the recorded sound is up close and personal--there is a certain loss of ambience, but with a performance this hot one doesn't mind being in the front row! Paray's grip of this work is so compelling it doesn't let up for a moment--by the end one is both amazed and exhausted. The overtures and marches are also performed with tremendous gusto. A spectacular achievement.

Today, Detroit is one of America's struggling cities. Its days as the world's manufacturing center now in the distant past, the city is laying off teachers and police in a lingering slow economy.

This scene could not have been more different in the 1950s, when Detroit produced half of all the cars in the world and was home to more than 2 million residents -- more than twice as many as today. Even the perennially poor Detroit Lions won three NFL championships in the 1950s and played in another.

It was at the end of that glorious decade that Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra recorded this once-in-a-lifetime performance of Berlioz's most fantastic symphony in the then-new Detroit Cass Technical High School auditorium.

Everyone on this muscial assembly line got it right: Paray blazed through the pages of Berlioz's score, the engineers brought forth a recording that might still be the best the Detroit Symphony has ever made, and the symphony itself was magnificent, as good or better than anytime since.

How can such a time in history come forth in a city hardly known as a paragon of culture? The answer would be Paray, a passionate Frenchman that build a great orchestra in Detroit and with it made some of Mercury's most wonderful recordings. Others in this sequence included Paray's own Mass, the St. Saens "Organ" Symphony and a lively Mendelssohn "Midsummer Night's Dream" sequence.

Paray brought out more from the Detroiters in his rapid fire romantic way than any resident conductor until Neemi Jarvi, who took the band on Europena tour, made a ton of recordings and again brought the orchestra to international promience.

No recording more encompasses the match made in Heavan quality of Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony than this Symphonie Fantastique. It is a rendeition most critics still hail as peer to Beecham, Ansermet, Davis and all the others that delivered a wallop in this music.

The reviewer from Texas is a learned music student, and is genuinely passionate about romantic music. Without a doubt, Paul Paray's 60's recording (originally on LP and in this cd there is original liner notes), is the greatest recording of the romantic symphony, the Symphony Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. As a delicious bonus, Paul Paray also conducts other great instrumental works by Berlioz, including the Overture to his monumental opera, Les Troyens (the French opera equivalent of Wagne'rs Ring operas) and the Roman Carnival Overture. At Paul Paray's baton, the structure and flowing melodic lines of the symphony are appropriately romantic, lilting and lush, especially in the "Reveries and Passions" first movement, the introduction of the idee fixe (fixed idea or theme, in this case, the hero's romantic love interest), "A Ball" and "Scene In The Countyside". Paray adds variety and contrast to the final movements, effectively dramatic and intense, as the darker aspects of the symphony unfold "The Witch's Sabbath" and "March To The Scaffold".

It is said that perhaps even Berlioz himself indulged in opium to compose this incredible symphony. Artists in the 19th century were known to hallucinate and create "artificial paradises" for inspiration while taking drugs as heavy as cocaine is today. The symphony tells the story of a young artist and hopeless romantic, without a name, who falls in love with a beautiful and ideal woman (her signature theme is the idee fixe, which turns up in each of the movements). He is infatuated and obscessed by her, seeing her virtually everywhere, including a masked ball. But after the scene in the countryside, there is a great change. The woman he loves has evidently jilted him and becomes a darker person. In the "Witches Sabbath" she is a witch and quite prepared to have him killed. In the final movement, March To The Scaffold, the hero is lead to an execution block where the axe is dropped on him by his own beloved.

The intense symphony encompasses the greatest elements of Romanticism in the 19th century. It has a romantic story, orchestrated with lush strings and winds, it has drama and darkness, full of fire and a nearly Beethoven-like finale. This is the best recording because it does not drag on seemingly forever in the slower tempos, it is balanced and full of variety and contrasted with the dark drama of the last movements. It is said that this symphony has two sides- Apollonyan, meaning classical, perfect aesthetic musical structure, and the Dyonisian, wild, orgiastic and frenzied horror. This recording blends both extremes to perfection. I am a music teacher and recommend this to any serious listener of classical music who will appreciate everything about the living art of symphonic music.

A friend of mine tells me Paul Paray had some sort of unexplainable gift in acheiving such perfect excellence with spooky ease. I bought several recordings to try to understand this, and this one represents well.

The startling ease in which such extreme expressions come across (definitely not labored, heavy, and overblown) is even the more powerful when you compare side-by-side with other "fantastique" recordings. Paray gets across the wildness of the orgies, the the timid and passionate character of the idee fixe, and never seems too work to hard.

Shame on whoever is in charge of discontinuing this CD. Start seeking out used stores now, and grab this gem whenever you can! You won't believe the sound. And, as always (for the music students like myself), the Mercury liner notes provide such great background-- you could almost write your paper solely on this disk and its liner notes ((although, it can't hurt to have the score! :)

Grab this quick.

This 1959 LP recording was digitally remastered for today's modern listener. It's of the highest calibre and contains no flaw according to my opinion. The praises and good reviews attest to the fact that this recording is the ultimate and best recording of Berlioz' Symphony Fantastique. There are many recordings, of course, that have more fame and star appeal, such as Herbert Von Karajan's version. But Paul Paray, a Canadian conductor most famous for his time as principal conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, is incredible in this recording.
Paul Paray's French soul seems to connect with the French Hector Berlioz and the vision he had when composing this program symphony.

When it premiered, the hopeless romantic Berlioz was obscessively in love with the Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson (He had seen her performances as Juliet and was very captivated). But his love was unrequited. Smithson thought that Berlioz was overly obscessed with her and his impassioned letters only frightened her. She avoided him for many years. When Symphonie Fantastique premiered, she was in the audience and she was smart enough to realize that the symphony was really about her. She is indeed the inspiration for the idee fixe, the love theme in the symphony. The program symphony is divided into movements with specialized scenes - Reveries and Passions, A Masked Ball, Scene In The Country, March To Scaffold and Witche's Sabbath. In the opening movement, the passion of the hero, Berlioz himself, bursts in romantic strains as the orchestra produces the romantic love theme and introduces the signature theme of his lady love.

The Masked Ball is a waltz, lilting and seductive, and again reprises the love theme. The Scene In The Country starts off idealistically, musically portraying the hero basking in the earthly paradise of the country and thinking of his beloved. But the seeds of doubt begin to haunt him as he considers the idea that his lady love is being unfaithful to him. The music darkens at this point. The following March To The Scaffold depicts our hero as he is lead to the guillotine. He has murdered his true love out of jealousy and is sentenced to death. The march concludes with the chopping of his head- we really feel that guillotine axe fall and then his head rolls and bounces musically. The final movement is the darkest and most intense. The Witches' Sabbath has the hero in the middle of a nightmare. Witches, ghouls and demons have assembled in a ritual ceremony in which they feast on the body of the fallen hero. The Dies Irae of the standard Requiem is very vividly pronounced and provides a monumentally horrifying atmosphere. This theme was used effectively in the movie "Sleeping With The Enemy" about an obscessive and abusive husband stalking his own wife.

Oh My! Paray takes Berlioz to heretofore unsolicited Heights! Under his Baton The music positively whirls and swirls like a Demonic Maelstorm! The DSO (My Home Band! YEA DSO!) positively Shimmer like thousands of glass fragments in Moonlight in the Dizzying, Eerie "Un Bal" Movement, Paray brings a Mysterious, and most evidently Sinister twist to this movement that usually sounds like Strauss on Acid under most conductors batons, but Paray's fast tempo (overwhelmingly so) brings a Hitchcockian Flavour to this seemingly unassuming movement. kinda like Jimmy Stewart looking down from a high place in "Vertigo", you sense the Evil Presence underneath the schmaltz! the Denoument of the "Witches Sabbath" movement is Cataclysmic and daring. more daring is the Horrifying Finality of the "March to the Gallows" Movement. the final bars are unlike any other in the Catalogue, the drop from the gallows played EXTREMELY Fast, almost halloucengenically, makes for a slightly uneasy feeling, like one's perception of the work is being skewed from within as well as without! which is the glory of this "Symphonie Fantastique" Paray and the DSO Rattle all coventions of this overly well-known work and breathe a new life into the work as well as bringing a far more Sinister, Malevolent tone to the music, it really sounds Grotesque and Unnerving as it must have in the early 19th century but to most of our ears, from watered down versions, simply sounds loud and boisterous under most Conductor's baton, Here, the Snap, Crackle and Pop of Evil and Opium-Induced Madness is defintiely present and Chillingly Felt! The Overtures are Sublime, Especially the "Carnival Romain" are Flatteringly performed, far from Textbook, in fact, radical in their presentation in places. but the standout, even over the "Symphonie" is the "Marche Hongroise" from "Faust" the only other thing on the disc to equal or surpass is the "Un Bal" movement, but here in the marche, everything comes together like Alchemy, a Unique twist in tempo change at the end, (which is rarely the case, most charge head long into the Finale of the march instead of slowing the tempo, which upon first hearing made me think Paray played it incorrectly) and a truly Victorious Sense of Tension and Mounting drama as the work progresses. About that Tempo Change, I first heard the proper version BY Paray on the radio, before having herad numerous others simply speed along, then i heard Jarvi conduct the DSO in this piece as an encore and he Slowed the tempo to and i again thought the DSO simply doesn't know how to play this piece, they keep changing the tempo i thought, but consulting an expert and reading the score, it does, in metrical terms, call for the orchestra to take a more, shall we say, STATELY approach to the finale. and it's not how i would conduct it, but it's how i now prefer to hear it! as to Gramophone's recent claim that Sir Colin Davis' Performance of the "Symphonie Fantastique" recently re-issued on Philips is the hallmark, that is yet to be seen, i don't own that version, i intend on buying it, but as of now, this is by far the Benchmark version, and i honestly have to think that Davis will have to go very far to top this version, as well as any other conductor, however, i must say the DSO seems especially in tune with this work, for when Jarvi Conducted it with them, it truly sent a shot through the hall and brought thundering ovations from the audience, me included, so i think Jarvi may have some special insight to this music as well. but for now, this is a version you must have in your collection.