[TR24][OF] Hector Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique (Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel) - 2014 (Classical)

In his “Fantastic Symphony in Five Parts,” a literal translation of the composer’s final title, Berlioz tells a musical tale with himself as the central character – creating not only a mood (as in Liszt’s symphonic poems), but states of mind and precise, physical situations. Nothing like it had been attempted on this scale before.
Berlioz’s new concept of how far one could go in dramatic music without resorting to a vocal text once caused considerable polemicizing over whether such music was viable without reference to the “story.” Wagner’s great friend and champion, Eduard Dannreuther, took the negative tack: “The Symphonie fantastique, particularly its finale, is sheer nonsense when the hearer has no knowledge of the program.”
„Dudamel is an excellent colorist . . . [his] colors are extremely vivid, and help with something else this conducting is very good at: maintaining great clarity of secondary lines, without muddying the primary melody. This is especially evident in the first movement her. Dudamel and the orchestra maintain a lovely, singing line through material that can otherwise seem merely introductory or transitional. Dudamel takes the movement's 'Passions' as seriously as the earlier 'dreams', perhaps even more so, with very strong accents and eruptive phrase launches in the more dynamic sections. The second-movement ball scene benefits from very flexible phrasing, and lots of feline portamento in the repeated opening material. The third movement is nicely bucolic . . . Then Dudamel and the LA Phil really take off in the 'Marc to the Scaffold', everything crackling with energy and played with a jolly snarl (and repeat) . . .“ (James Reel, Fanfare)
Recorded: March 28-30, 2008
Producer: David Frost
Recording engineer: Fred Vogler
Editing engineers: David Frost and Fred Vogler
Mastering engineers: Tim Martyn and Scott Sedillo