Hector BERLIOZ (1803-1869)
Symphonie fantastique Op.14 (1830)
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Charles Munch
rec. 9 April 1962, Boston Symphony Hall
HIGH DEFINITION TAPE TRANSFERS HDCD207 [49:01]
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
This re-mastering is a revelation and gives new life to a classic account.