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International Record Review, May 2010

The Philharmonia plays beautifully for Esa-Pekka Salonen on this latest version of a much-recorded work, and are also beautifully recorded with an acute ear for all the orchestral detail. The orchestra's woodwind section particularly distinguishes itself, with eloquent, forlorn exchanges between the oboe and cor anglais in the 'Scene aux Champs' (echoed by timpani so firmly and accurately tuned as hardly to sound like the obscure thunder they are intended to imitate), with vigorous bassoons in the famous virtuoso passage near the start of the 'Marche au Supplice', with frenzied squawks from the E flat clarinet in the perversion of the idee fixe in the 'Witches' Sabbath' and before that, as the blade of the guillotine is about to fall, and Berlioz asks for this version of the idee fixe to be pp dolee assai e appassionato, with a plea from the little C clarinet so touching as surely to stay the hand of all but the most blood-hardened executioner. Salonen pays, for the most part, very close attention to Berlioz's markings, but also, which is by no means necessarily the same thing, brings them vividly to life. The opening 'Reveries' section is played fluently and with the detail carefully respected. He is less respectful towards the tempo instructions, for instance in the first movement, where Berlioz asks first for a slight slowing up, un peu retenu, and later an equally slight speeding up, un peu plus anime. Salonen exaggerates these dramatically when the effect sought after is surely something more subtly expressive. More surprisingly, he does not take the first movement repeat, not a very long one and something that is important to the balance of the movement. Perhaps the reason is to accommodate the whole of Beethoven's second Leonore Overture, of which he gives a strong, secure performance but which extends the total length of the disc to just over 67 minutes: too much for Berlioz's minute-and-a-half of repeated music?

On the whole, this is a traditional performance, with some good ideas of its own. For instance, in 'Un bal', which incidentally includes the optional cornet solo, the elegance in the waltzing slowly acquires a corrupt tinge near the end, suggesting a note of the French Romantics' admired Edgar Allan Poe. 'The Marche au Supplice' has a bright swagger to it, but again the colours begin to glint a little garishly as the procession winds its grim way towards the scaffold. These are effective ideas in a well-turned, thoughtful performance.

John Warrack

BBC Music Magazine, June 2010
Performance ****
Recording ****

Don't ever be tempted to typecast Esa-Pekka Salonen as a hardline modernist. The Finnish composer may have launched himself as the Philharmonia's current principal conductor/artistic advisor in September 2008 with a nine-month survey of early 20th-century Viennese scores (including an impressive version of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, released by Signum and favourably reviewed by Michael Tanner in December) but in this Symphonie Fantastique, recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall later that same month, he reveals himself as a powerful Berliozian too.

Berlioz was always a Classicist at heart, despite the hyper-Romantic trappings, and – with all the key instrumental solos and still arrestingly original effects given due prominence - there's a passionate restraint about Salonen's reading that is far more telling than many more overtly histrionic versions. The slow movement in particular shows a masterly control of tempo and texture, clearly prioritising musical imperatives over mere pictorialism, yet with no shortage of electricity in the air, either emotional or elemental. While Salonen in no way underplays the inexorable March to the Scaffold or the galumphing grotesqueries of the concluding Witches' Sabbath, his account of the music can clearly stand on its own without recourse to the crutch of Berlioz's over-heated literary narrative.

The coupling is less convincing. Berlioz was of course heavily influenced by Beethoven and, in his Memoirs, admiringly recalled hearing a Leonore overture - he doesn't say which of the three - played 'with rare precision and verve'. Salonen certainly supplies the first, if not the second: at 15 minutes, his account is more sluggish than Klemperer's, though the loss of tension midway is more Beethoven's fault than his. But can Berlioz really have heard and admired a work that his hero rightly rejected? If not, what's it doing on this CD?

Mark Pappenheim

Classic FM Magazine, November 2010

The Music The Symphonie fantastique immortalizes Berlioz's infatuation with Irish actress Harriet Smithson. She crops up throughout by means of her own musical signature or idée fixe in a variety of contexts, including a carnival ball, a pastoral landscape, the Revolutionary scaffold and, after Berlioz has taken a draft of opium, the Witches' Sabbath! Beethoven's Leonore Overture No.2 features alongside as an added bonus.

The Performance Recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall in September 2008, the Philharmonia gives its all in a performance that relishes the manic contrasts in Berlioz's groundbreaking score as well as emphasising its symphonic sweep - as witness the March to the Scaffold, with its galvanising sense of macabre invincibility. Most successful, however, is the extended Adagio Scene in the Countryside which possesses a haunting stillness and concentration. What a pity that the magnificent string section has a tendency to get swamped in the grandest climaxes.

The Verdict As a souvenir of an exciting occasion this is well worth hearing. Given the absence of Paray and Munch from the catalogue, Salonen is doubly welcome.

Julian Haylock

Audiophile Audition, 12 October 2010
*****

After years of being protected by his LA PhiI connection, and driven by agendas conceived of by marketing types, Esa-Pekka Salonen is starting to branch out on his own in mainstream repertoire. The results are not entirely surprising, but with every step Esa-Pekka Salonen takes, he has suddenly become a man worth watching and listening to.

The performances of both the Berlioz, which everybody knows by now, and the Beethoven, which was rarely heard in concert even when Beethoven was in vogue, are notable for the excellence of the musicians, especially when they are given something interesting to do. For example, the deconstruction Salonen opts for in the Adagio is played with the identifiable beauty and precision that has come to be known as Philharmonia. The March to the Gallows and the Witches Sabbath are nice and would make a nice sound on a big system. The Valse is charming, although it's less a waltz and more a contredanse.

The Beethoven is an altogether different matter. It is a good choice: Beethoven's second attempt at an overture for his one opera Fidelio, is the emotionally richest of the three, with hints of hard-driving sexuality. In any event, Salonen is oblivious to the mysteries that we associate so strongly with the German romantic composers of the 19th century. Instead, it is like being in the composer's heads, feeling the ecstasy and exuberance that comes from being in love with Beethoven.

The tempos, like for the Berlioz, seem under control whatever their actual speed. When the final breakout comes at the end, the Philharmonia sings out soaring lines of smiling beauty, revealing more about Beethoven than all the original instrument recordings ever have. Salonen's Beethoven is close to Kristjan Jarvis' recent Haydn and Beethoven for Preiser. Together they could be an unprecedented Beethoven force around the world.

The sound is clear and precise, fueled in the Beethoven by the composer's compassion for the imperfections of man. The series would have infinitely more impact if each booklet included a roundtable Q&A with the conductor and the musicians.

Laurence Vittes

Fanfare Magazine, November 2010

With 150 current listings, one wouldn't think that Berlioz's most famous work needed another recording; yet, in a strange way, the Symphonie Fantastique has fallen victim to a fate similar to that of a number of music's sonic blockbusters, such as Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and An Alpine Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture , and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring , to name just a few. Appreciation of the musical value intrinsic in such works can be diluted when they are reduced to fare for testing the limits of an audiophile’s state-of-the- art electronics. Whether real canons and carillon are used in the Tchaikovsky, for example, should not be the determining factor in judging the quality of a performance, any more than should the determining factor in judging a performance of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique be whether or not an actual ophicleide and serpent are employed in the orchestra.

I began to muse on this having heard a recent Fantastique on period instruments with Jos van Immerseel leading the Anima Eterna Orchestra on Zig-Zag Territoires. That recording, reviewed by both Phillip Scott and Ronald E. Grames in Fanfare 33:6, had the period-instrument camp abuzz when it was first released. Scott and Grames, however, were both more circumspect in their assessments, finding much to admire, but also offering some cautionary criticism.

Some of Scott's observations apply to the interpretive aspects of the performance and the emotional responses elicited: "The potential downside of any conductor wishing to put the music under a microscope is that all-important atmosphere and dramatic tension may be sacrificed in the process. Van Immerseel does not entirely avoid this; his 'Marche au supplice' lacks menace until the very final bars, and more damagingly, his 'Scene aux Champs' fails to speak of the protagonist's sense of loneliness and desolation." Grames, too, acknowledges interpretive weaknesses, concurring that Immerseel’s "Scène aux champs," in particular, is disappointing. But what I find more interesting in both Scott's and Grame's reviews are comments addressing pragmatic decisions that involve technical execution as opposed to musical interpretation of Berlioz's score.

If one goes so far as to employ the ophicleide (a type of 19th-century, conical- bored, brass-keyed bugle which was eventually eclipsed by the tuba and euphonium), then why not a serpent (a bass-wind instrument descended from the cornett family), which Berlioz also calls for in the score, but which Immerseel shuns? But even more disturbing, as noted by both Scott and Grames, is Immerseel's substitution of two period pianos playing in low octaves in place of Berlioz's specifically indicated bells. The conductor’s rationalization is that the composer approved the practice on a couple of occasions when the piece was performed in Germany. No doubt, the German orchestras Berlioz encountered on his visits to Dresden and Cologne were not equipped with bells, as either they could not afford them or no music they had previously played required them. But with all its glitz and glitter, you can be sure that the Paris Conservatory had at its disposal the full battery of instruments the composer required when his Symphonie Fantastique was premiered there in 1830 under the baton of François-Antoine Habeneck.

Personally, I find it somewhat disingenuous to pretend that just because a recording uses period instruments the performance must therefore be historically authentic. I say this because when it comes to Berlioz's Fantastique , I will gladly take any number of great performances on modern instruments over those on period instruments when the modern ones are by great orchestras and conductors that penetrate the heart and soul of this music-Mitropoulos/ New York Philharmonic (1957), Munch/Boston (1962), Bernstein/New York Philharmonic (1963), Davis/LSO (1963), Davis/Concertgebouw (1974), Solti/ Chicago (1992), Boulez/Cleveland (1996), and once again Davis/LSO (2000).

Oddly perhaps, between the last-named Davis and this new Salonen, there has been a bit of a hiatus in modern-instrument Fantastiques . A 2008 Rattle performance with the Berlin Philharmonic, another 2008 recording from Gustavo Dudamel, Salonen's successor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic (available only as a download), and a just released PentaTone SACD with Marek Janowski and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra are the only three I’m aware of. But period-instrument performances from Norrington, Gardiner, and the aforementioned Immerseel have filled the gap.

I've come this far without saying a word about Esa-Pekka Salonen's performance with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Interpretively, I find it very satisfying. Details, especially in the lower-registered instruments-cellos, bassoons, and double basses - emerge with great clarity, allowing important counterpoints often obscured by the mid- and higher-ranged instruments to be heard to stunning effect. This contributes to one’s appreciation of the subtleties and nuances of the score and to how skillful a composer and orchestrator Berlioz really was. Salonen encourages the cornets to go all out in "Un bal," and the dialoging between the English horn and oboe in the "Scène aux champs," the work’s heart, is as plaintively played as I've heard it. Repeats in the first and fourth movements are skipped, which is a bit of a disappointment, especially in the "March to the Scaffold," which gains significantly from the repeat in building tension toward the head-chopping dénouement, and is cut short without it-only 4:38 in this performance.

The loss is mostly compensated for in the last movement, where Salonen stirs up quite a witch's brew. The Eb-clarinet cackles and crackles like the hag it's meant to portray in the episode that transforms the idée fixe into a grinning, taunting harpy. Real bells of the tubular type, aka chimes, ominously announce the Dies irae. Infernal hammerings accompany the malevolent saturnalia as the Dies irae combines with the idĂ©e fixe and the witches’ dance in a mounting orgy. And finally, the disembodied sound of the violins playing col legno , like the clattering of so many pairs of skeletons' teeth, unlocks Pandora's Box, from which, in the words of Jonathan Swift, "A sudden universal Crew of humane Evils upwards flew." The live audience, dead silent until the end, erupts in a wild and well-deserved ovation. This is a superb Fantastique, and the recording captures it in all of its grotesque glory. Other than the absence of the repeats, I have no reason not to extend a strong recommendation. I would, however, urge a bit of patience before purchasing this release, only because I suspect that the brand new, not yet heard, and not yet reviewed Fantastique with Janowski and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on a PentaTone SACD is apt to give Salonen and the Philharmonia a run for their money.

The live audience, dead silent until the end, erupts in a wild and well-deserved ovation. This is a superb Fantastique, and the recording captures it in all of its grotesque glory. Other than the absence of the repeats, I have no reason not to extend a strong recommendation. I would, however, urge a bit of patience before purchasing this release, only because I suspect that the brand new, not yet heard, and not yet reviewed Fantastique with Janowski and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on a PentaTone SACD is apt to give Salonen and the Philharmonia a run for their money.

It seems a bit odd to have tacked Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 2 onto the end of the disc. As it was part of the same live concert, I would have expected it to come at the beginning. Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is not really a work that anything follows on a program. Be that as it may, this is as fine a performance of the Beethoven as any.

Jerry Dubins