Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
Symphonie fantastique (1830)
Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst
rec. 2024, live, Mandeal Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Cleveland, USA
Reviewed as a download
The Cleveland Orchestra TCO0013D [50]
By my reckoning this is the twelfth record by the Cleveland Orchestra since their A New Century box (review) which I remember hearing during the lockdown in 2020. Releases have included more Prokofiev, Strauss and Schubert and the records have won many plaudits. This latest disc was recorded from concerts in Cleveland in May 2024 after Franz Welser-Möst’s surgery to remove a tumour, but before his recent absence from the rostrum due to side effects from ongoing treatment.
Welser-Möst has been a huge hit in Cleveland. He will in a year or so overtake the legendary George Szell as their longest serving Music Director. Last summer (2024) he took the orchestra on a short European tour that visited Berlin, Lucerne, Vienna and Helsinki where he programmed Prokofiev 2, Tchaikovsky 5, Bruckner 4 and for one night the Symphonie fantastique.
From the get-go he adopts a lively tempo. The largo introduction which is in C minor sounds lighter than usual and airy; the scurrying violins that begin to dance at bar 17 with the gradual crescendo on lower strings is agile and fleet of foot. There is grace and delicacy, too. Listen to the arabesques in flute and clarinet from bar 28 (2:06 in this performance). For Hyperion (in the most recent of contemporary recordings of this work), Thierry Fischer in Salt Lake City (review) has his strings play with noticeably less vibrato. The Utah SO are impressive matching the Clevelanders for beauty of tone in this section, but I prefer the overall tempi decisions made by Welser-Möst.
The jabbing accompaniment to the idée fixe when it arrives is alive and helps establish the tonality of the music. They also seem like a heart-beat and I like to think of them in this way. If they do represent the heart our artist’s passions are already intensifying especially in this account from Cleveland. Both this version and Thierry Fischer’s take the exposition repeat at bar 166 in the score (6:13 in Cleveland).
Welser-Möst is Austrian and characteristically strict with rubato and, as I have stressed, he keeps up a fast pace; the whole movement is despatched in 13:38. This may be too fast for some (remember they did the repeat, too). I am quite convinced Welser-Möst sees the first movement as principally an original yet essentially strict exercise in sonata form. He does not pull it about, nor accentuate details that other maestros might. I admire that. In my comparative version, Thierry Fischer’s Utah SO don’t quite have the precision in ensemble that the Cleveland Orchestra have but I am similarly pleased with the pacing of the movement through its sections and the absence of idiosyncrasies. They get through it in a more standard 15:16.
The Cleveland Orchestra have a rich discography. They first did the Symphonie fantastique with Rodzinski in 1941 on American Columbia (although it was released on this side of the Atlantic too with numbers LX 25025-30, 12ss of shellac). I couldn’t find any record of Szell doing it but Maazel his successor did it twice (his Telarc version is likewise speedy like the Welser-Möst; I haven’t heard the earlier CBS version). Dohnányi recorded it also in Cleveland for Decca in 1989 and finally I found that Boulez also made a record there for DG in 1996. Boulez’s timings are very similar to Welser-Möst’s, with a first movement of 13:58 including repeat; bizarrely, though, Boulez feels even faster in the way he drives his players on, in my opinion to less satisfying results overall.
Un bal is a three-in-a-bar lollipop. The plan is just ABA with an introduction and coda added. Here Welser-Möst moves freshly through all the waltzing. Over tremolo strings two harps make their first glittering appearance. They are balanced nicely here. In Stephen Barber’s review of the Fischer record he suspected possible boosting by the engineers. Tim Handley (producer and recording engineer) for Hyperion certainly made a fine record in Utah but I agree those harps do seem too prominent. Back to the Cleveland record, the second movement’s central section brings back the idée fixe in bar 120 on flute and oboe over some delightful antiphonal string writing (sample at 2:10). It is an expertly crafted performance with both grace and precision; sample the whirlwind-like strings at 5:23 and you will see what I mean. This movement also displays what great sonics the technical team achieved. There is no muddiness and winds come through the string texture naturally.
In Scène aux champs we hear most obviously the influence of Beethoven on the young Berlioz. When he arrived in Paris aged 17 he had never heard an orchestra. That changed quickly. He was like a sponge and soaked up as much opera as he could. When conductor François Habeneck founded the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1828, Berlioz was there to hear his first Beethoven. The third movement of his Symphonie fantastique is undoubtedly indebted to the Pastoral. Same key, same time signature yet never derivative. Listen to the important solo work on cor anglais and oboe (Robert Walters and Frank Rosenwein) and its continuation over the pedal of those divided violas, or bar 119 where a solo clarinet (Afendi Yusef) spins a heavenly line over pizzicato strings before an expertly managed crescendo is heard. There are more pastoral dialogues, this time between flute (Joshua Smith), clarinet and oboe beginning at 10:28. Idyllic.
The movement ends with the cor anglais’ sad, plaintive calls. This time there is no answer from the oboe, only distant rolls of thunder played by four timpani each of whom has their own part.
On Hyperion, Thierry Fischer’s slow movement is for me the crowning glory of his version. He keeps it moving whilst allowing room for some gorgeous phrasing and use of light and shade. I get the feeling Fischer gets Berlioz too, in the way Beecham and Colin Davis did (now that is high praise indeed). The Utah players are mightily impressive and I hope they continue recording with their new conductor Markus Poschner.
Those ominous timpani rolls signalled something menacing on the horizon: Marche au supplice. Welser-Möst’s introduction, main theme and march melody up to bar 77 is repeated as the score instructs. The brass really snarl and bite. As the march develops there are some fantastic opportunities for a great orchestra to impress. Listen to those figurations the strings play from bar 114 fortissimo (4:46). This march is a procession to the scaffold Berlioz, although too young to remember himself will have known only too well was in living memory for some in the audience. That nightmarish period in the 1790s known as La Terreur is invoked here and the moment of decapitation (bar 169) is still a shock. Three Timpani’s roll a chilling chord above which the final harmony in G major blazes forth and it’s all over. Again, with a timing of 6:27 this performance is faster than average.
If the march was a departure from the classical stability and balance of the first three movements what comes next is even more extreme: Songe d’une nuit du sabbat. Yet it is possible to see this climatic finale as a prelude and fugue too. The prelude section is divided into three parts: an introduction, a main section where we hear the idée fixe first distorted in the clarinet then later in the smaller E flat version of the instrument (1:37) and finally from bar 102 (2:46) we hear the last section beginning with the tolling funeral bells and the Dies Irae theme in four bassoons and two tubas.
The fugue begins in bar 241 (5:17). This is the witches’ dance or Ronde du Sabbat so it says in the score. The writing is exciting and very original. At bar 348 after a little shake in the violins and violas (7:06) we again hear the plainsong refrain low down before a creepy rising passage begins rising menacingly through the strings. The forceful statement of it for the final time in winds, brass and lower strings is accompanied by dancing mesmerizing figurations in violins and violas. All of it is vividly captured in this recording.
The last minute or so is wild. From the col legno action (Berlioz writes strike with the back of the bow) in bar 444 (8:49) to the headlong wild rush to the end. In this performance Welser-Möst takes just over ten minutes. He was even faster in Helsinki. It is a controlled witches’ sabbath but all the atmosphere of the devilish goings-on are still vividly projected. If you are expecting the wild abandonment of a Munch performance you may be disappointed but it is virtuosic and exciting nonetheless and I will definitely be returning to this version. The orchestra are truly first rate and the sound is excellent.
There is no applause at the end of the performance and I didn’t detect any audience noises, coughing etc. that sometimes can affect our enjoyment of a live concert on record. As far as I can make out, though, the product is not available as a physical CD disc, only as a download and streaming on the usual platforms.
Keen concertgoers and those who keep their eyes on upcoming record releases may wonder about the chances of a forthcoming CD from the dream team of Klaus Mäkelä (only a little older than Berlioz when he wrote the work) and the Orchestre de Paris. They programmed the work at the BBC Proms last summer. It was a stunning performance for sure – more expansive than this one but similar in outlook and objectivity; Decca could literally release that Proms taping and they would have a winner on their hands. Of course, there are countless other versions in the catalogues that one could make a case for and we are the richer for them. This new account is a worthy addition to the list.
Philip Harrison
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