Opium and a beautiful woman

Darryl · Post by **Darryl** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 3:33 pm

If you'll pardon the gimmickry of the thread subject, I wanted your input on extant releases of Symphonie Fantastique. I've the standard recommendation of Davis/Concertgebuow, but was wondering about Munch/BSO '62 (didn't care for the '54) and Tilson Thomas/SFSO (apparently re-released on the RCA Classic Library series). I'm leaning towards the MTT, but the Munch '62 is available on XRCD which is nice for those of us without SACD players. Thank you all ...

MahlerSnob · Post by **MahlerSnob** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 4:22 pm

I know the MTT/SFS recording is excellent. The orchestra was at its peak on recordings like that one and the Prokofiev R&J that was released around the same time. As for MTT's interpretation (which have been questionable at times), I haven't listened to the recording recently enough to say anything about it. I've also heard very good things about the Munch/BSO. If you're more interested in the sound and quality of the orchestral playing, go for the SFS. If you're more interested in a solid interpretation, go with the Munch. If you don't care, go to the record store and see which one's cheaper.

jbuck919 · Post by **jbuck919** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 4:29 pm

You take the Dysphonie Martinique that seriously, huh guys? Ok, I accept that. Carry on.

Heck148 · Post by **Heck148** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 4:34 pm

Darryl wrote:I wanted your input on extant releases of Symphonie Fantastique. I've the standard recommendation of Davis/Concertgebuow, but was wondering about Munch/BSO '62 (didn't care for the '54) and Tilson Thomas/SFSO (apparently re-released on the RCA Classic Library series)

I haven't heard the MTT.

I've heard numerous versions of Munch, with the BSO and other orchestras, both live concerts, and commercial releases. they all suffer from the same hyper-active sloppiness that continually plagued his reading of SymFant...

He takes the March way too fast, the dotted rhythms don't come off, and musically it makes no sense...this guy shouldn't be rushing to get to the guillotine!!

also, Munch gets things worked up so feverishly in the finale that the orchestra falls apart - the triplets in the WWs and strings are so rushed that it is not cleanly played...
and in every recording I've heard, the low brass could never make the descending triplet lick at the very end...

I talked to the then-bass trombonist about this one time [he lives near me] - and he said Munch just loved to crank the tempo up in concert, he'd just race like crazy, never mind whether the orchestra could play it or not...

probably quite exciting in live performance, but on repeated listening, on recording, it just comes off as rushed and poorly executed.

Ralph · Post by **Ralph** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 6:48 pm

MTT/SFS if you're only getting one.

But I like the Munch performance which offers its own dose of excitement.

jserraglio · Post by **jserraglio** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:50 pm

Haven't heard the MTT yet--now I'll just have to play it to find out--the other recs (Munch and Davis)--fine perfs but they don't move me as much as my sentimental favorites:

Beecham ONRF
Bernstein NYP
Ansermet OSR
Stokowski LSO
Ormandy PO

Coriolan · Post by **Coriolan** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 8:38 pm

Of the the 6 cd's I have of the Symphonie fantastique I prefer the Lorin Maazel recording that he did with the Cleveland orchestra on Telarc. The March to the Scaffold and the Dance of the Witches Sabbath are outstanding soundwise. The performance is up a few grades from his recording on CBS Masterworks that had been recorded earlier. Next I would have to say Charles Munch with the BSO recorded in the early 60's on RCA LIving Presence. The one I like the least is the DGG cd with Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra. I found it to be dry and dull. As for the Colin Davis with the London Symphony Orchestra the performance is good but I find the recording not up to par. The Semyon Bychkof cd with the Orchestre de Paris is a good performance with good sound but not equal, as far as I am concerned, to the Maazel telarc disc.

Post by **Corlyss_D** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:39 am

jserraglio wrote:Ansermet OSR

My! There's a name you don't hear much any more.

pizza · Post by **pizza** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:58 am

Best performance I've ever heard, live or recorded is Van Otterloo/Berlin PO from the mid-'50s. I think it's been reissued on a Japanese Philips CD.

jserraglio · Post by **jserraglio** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 4:12 am

Corlyss_D wrote:

My! There's a name [Ansermet] you don't hear much any more.

His LP records seem to be snapped up whenever they appear at my local used mart, so I don't think I'm alone in admiring his musicianship.

re: Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique--another favorite is Paray conducting the DetroitSO on Mercury.

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:28 am

A frank tangent ... but I rather like the added cornet in Un bal

david54706 · Post by **david54706** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 9:03 am

I like Riccardo Muti with the Philadelphia Orchestra. His 1985 recording, issued on Seraphim Classics, reflects his own personal balance of fierceness against romantic warmth.This recording holds the thread of argument together firmly without ever underplaying the excitement. IMHO, the sound is among the best Muti has had in his Philadelphia recordings, "full in range if not always ideally clear in texture", as one critic put it.

Darryl · Post by **Darryl** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 1:49 pm

Ah heck! For some reason I didn't get the email notifications on all these very useful posts.

Speaking of Heck, I just put on the Munch '62 XRCD, and I don't find the rhythms as problematic as you, but I agree with your points on the tempi.

I haven't had time to get the MTT yet. I've seen strange criticisms about it, like "disqualified" for being "overly decorous"; and the detail is there in spades, but he (MTT) "doesn't perform it" (the latter from Gramophone which favors Davis of course). However, that won't deter me from getting it soon.

I wonder who played it in the movie "Sleeping With The Enemy?"

Ralph · Post by **Ralph** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 2:21 pm

Corlyss_D wrote:
jserraglio wrote:Ansermet OSR
My! There's a name you don't hear much any more.

*****

Not in Utah but if you hang out in the right circles...

Darryl · Post by **Darryl** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 4:46 pm

Yes, the MTT has stunning playing and sound. The percussion is particularly thunderous in the last movement (I'm certain my neighbor is not happy with me right now).

Darryl · Post by **Darryl** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 2:34 pm

Okay, my last point, lest some of you think I'm obsessing

Munch/BSO '62 wins out for me, largely because he's manic throughout whilst maintaining cohesive ensemble ('62 mind you, and on XRCD).

MTT is very good if you're looking for outstanding sound (and playing really). However, his first 3 movements are relatively boring to me, and the balances don't seem right (i.e., if I adjust the 1st mvmt where I like it the percussion in the 5th mvmt blows my room out). MTT's last two movements are excellent, his March marginally more ominous and Witches Sabboth marginally more sinister, primarily from manipulation of dynamics. As an aside, it sounds as though SF's percussionist uses chimes while Boston's uses bells of some sort (not sure what the score calls for), but the sound is quite different. I like the bells better, if only he didn't smack them so loudly.

PS - with either I can imagine Julia Roberts freaking out as she realizes the neurotic, obsessive Patrick Bergin has finally tracked her down.

Wallingford · Post by **Wallingford** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 4:44 pm

I'd go with Munch or Paray any old day; Paavo Jarvi's recent one is fine in many ways; and I wish to give a nod to Bernstein 1--never reissued until about 6 years ago.

But MONTEUX is the one for me......if you're no stickler for modern sound. He did it in stereo twice, though he was in his 80s by that point & had mellowed a bit more for my liking. Monteux 3 (his last mono one) is THE best, in my book; never reissued on CD. If you want a good idea of his basic interpretation, by all means spend ten bucks or less on the Music & Arts reissue CD of his first, with the Paris Symphony. For 1930, it was one of the greatest phonograpic achievements of its time, despite the fact sound reproduction wasn't yet quite ready for Berlioz.

But you still get a good idea of Monteux's conception, which amazingly didn't change much through the decades. I have a live concert tape of his '59 NYP performance that's near & dear to me.

Heck148 · Post by **Heck148** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 7:09 pm

Munch, every version I've heard, at least 4 or 5, makes a mess of it.

over-rated by far....

If you want fast and manic, yet completely together - try Solti/CSO I or II - incredible execution...real sound spectacular stuff..

I also like Mitropoulos/NYPO from '56. wonderfully creepy and macabre - the March is slow, but so deliciously raucous....

Post by **Corlyss_D** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:04 am

Heck148 wrote:over-rated by far....

You can say that again!!!!

Talk about over played!

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 6:18 am

Heck148 wrote:... the March is slow, but so deliciously raucous....

Since it's a sombre, ceremonial sort of march, slow works very well with this ... and Berlioz marks it Allegretto non troppo, a designation with 'two brakes' (as it were) on plain Allegro: the diminutive -etto ('a little fast') and the cautionary non troppo ('not too much').

Wallingford · Post by **Wallingford** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 1:03 pm

I'd like to single out, too, the only time I heard it "live": when Janssons & the Pittsburgh Symphony came to town 6 years back. In fact, it was probably the only time anyone else in the audience heard it in concert--Gerard Schwarz NEVER programmed it in Seattle. The thing the struck me the most was the UTTER QUIETUDE of the audience, usually a noisy lot; you could've heard a pin drop in all the soft sections; the offstage oboe in the third movement was place way at the other end of the hall, to the left of the second-tier balcony (wouldn't YOU like several hundred pairs of eyes fixate on you during a solo like that?!); and the tympani & bells & pianos were placed backstage.

It was amazing sensing everyone frozen and at attention in the final part of the third movement--it's FUN, too, considering Northwesterners are AFRAID of thunder!

Darryl · Post by **Darryl** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 1:29 pm

Heck, who would've figured you'd suggest Chicago? I'm not looking for fast. I remember hearing Munch/BSO '54 and hating it, but the '62 is tight. No way it's a mess.

Wallingford, I've heard good things about the Paray, unfortunately OOP.

Wallingford · Post by **Wallingford** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 8:35 pm

Just wanted to cast a vote, too, for John Eliot Gardiner's '93 account on Philips--with his Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique.

He deserves special plaudits for trying to duplicate the sound of Berlioz's ensemble, right down to recording it in the hall where the work premiered.

Wallingford · Post by **Wallingford** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:47 pm

I'm not normally one to re-open a thread, but I thought I'd let you in on a unique treatment of Berlioz' masterpiece.....one that's the POLAR OPPOSITE of Munch's & Paray's brisk treatment, one that really STRETCHES things out, timing- and tempo-wise. An interpretation that really gets HAIRY at times, with its slow morbidity--and it's a CHEAPY, no less!!:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... =classical

I'm willing to bet the conductor's a pseudonym, though.

Zdenek Kosler (on a cheapie EMI reissue) goes even LONGER than this guy's tempos, I believe:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... =classical

Both are close--in conception & treatment, if not in genius--to Koussevitzky's interpretation (you could tell Bernstein took after HIM).

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:50 am

Wallingford wrote:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... =classical

I'm willing to bet the conductor's a pseudonym, though.

Alberto Lizzio at ArkivMusic.com

premont · Post by **premont** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 7:59 am

[quote="Wallingford"]
I'm willing to bet the conductor's a pseudonym, though.

[/quote]

So am I. The fact that lots of recordings have been released in "his" name, doesn´t prove "his" existence.

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:14 am

Why choose such a lame pseudonym as Alberto Lizzio?

Why not Sting? Or The Edge?

Or Elton John?

premont · Post by **premont** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:06 pm

[quote="karlhenning"]Why choose such a lame pseudonym as [b]Alberto Lizzio[/b]?

[/quote]

The pseudonym Alberto Lizzio hides more different artists. The name has been invented by a manager in a questionable cd-company.
If you read italian, look here: .

www.harmoniae.com/orchestre_fantasma.cfm

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 1:16 pm

Thanks for the info, premont!

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