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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique (Charles Münch)


Information

Composer: Hector Berlioz
  1. Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: I. "Rêveries. Passions" (Daydreams. Passions)
  2. Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: II. "Un bal" (A Ball)
  3. Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: III. "Scène aux champs" (Scene in the Fields)
  4. Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: IV. "Marche au supplice" (March to the Scaffold)
  5. Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: V. "Songe d'une nuit de sabbat" (Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath)

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Charles Münch, conductor
Date: 1962
Label: High Definition Tapes Transfer (originally recorded by RCA)
http://www.highdeftapetransfers.com/products/berlioz-symphonie-fantastique-boston-symphony-orchestra-charles-munch

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Review

This famous recording has been given some cleanup treatment, lifting the colour and presence of an already spectacular recording to an unprecedented degree. 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 from 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 – the liner-notes do not give the actual date of 9th April – 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 “Immortal Beloved”. Here, more than anywhere 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.

One minor quibble: HDTT have made an odd choice of cover design in using a painting made in 1866 by Fortuny, “Fantasía sobre Fausto”. Apart from the fact that Teldec used the same work far more appropriately for the cover of their 1993 box-set of Gounod’s “Faust”, the association is surely at best tenuous and at worst incongruous. Never mind; this re-mastering is a revelation and gives new life to a classic account.

-- Ralph Moore, MusicWeb International

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Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions "Symphonie fantastique" and "Grande messe des morts" (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his "Treatise on Instrumentation". He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works, and conducted several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians. Although neglected in France for much of the 19th century, the music of Berlioz has often been cited as extremely influential in the development of the symphonic form, instrumentation, and the depiction in music of programmatic and literary ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Berlioz

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Charles Munch (born Charles Münch; 26 September 1891 – 6 November 1968) was an Alsacian symphonic conductor and violinist. He studied with Carl Flesch in Berlin and Lucien Capet at the Conservatoire de Paris, and served as concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester under Wilhelm Furtwängler and Bruno Walter. Noted for his mastery of the French orchestral repertoire, he was best known as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Munch's discography is extensive, both in Boston on RCA Victor and at his various European posts and guest conducting assignments on various labels, including English Decca, EMI, Nonesuch, Erato and Auvidis-Valois.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Munch_(conductor)

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