BaL 15.10.11 - Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

[John Skelton]

Here's

http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/April%201989/32/801150

John Warrack's Gramophone review of Norrington's LCP recording (a two page review: that wouldn't happen now). Warrack seems to think everyone should take account of RN's version, as it happens .

[umslopogaas]

Without making any deliberate effort I seem to have accumulated thirteen versions, all on LP ... but it is a much-recorded work. Eight are not on the list, and presumably unavailable:

Ansermet/OSR (Decca)
Solti/Chicago SO (Decca)
Ormandy/Philadelphia O (English CBS
Barbirolli/Halle (Pye Golden Guinea)
Zecchi/Czech PO (Supraphon)
Munch/Orchestre de Paris (EMI)
Karajan/BPO (DG)
Argenta/Paris Conservatoire O (Decca)

Never otherwise heard of Zecchi, before or since. Does anyone know other recordings? The sleeve says born 1903 in Paris, studied piano with Busoni and Schnabel, made his conducting debut in 1941, has made recordings with most famous orchestras and as accompanist to the cellist E. Mainardi.

[John Skelton]

Munch Orchestre de Paris is available http://www.amazon.co.uk/Symphonie-Fa...8083690&sr=1-9 (many cheaper than Amazon's price).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

John Warrack's Gramophone review of Norrington's LCP recording (a two page review: that wouldn't happen now). Warrack seems to think everyone should take account of RN's version, as it happens .

I'm aware that RN has lots of hangers-on. In music education, it used to be John Paynter. In the tabloids it was Diana, Princess of Wales. Now it's Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowle, whoever he is.
I do generally respect John Warrack though.

[vinteuil]

I'm aware that RN has lots of hangers-on.

read: "I, Alpensinfonie, do not like the work of Sir Roger Norrington. Many other - well informed, highly musical - people do like the work of Sir Roger Norrington very much indeed."

[John Skelton]

Hmm. Since it was the first recorded performance to attempt, programmatically, to realise through choice of instruments & reexamination of documentary sources the orchestral colours, timbres & effects that Berlioz built into his score, whatever it was Norrington might have said - it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that subsequent performances should have paid / continue to pay some attention to it.

(Obviously it wouldn't do to underestimate the laziness of certain 'maestros' & the inbuilt resistance to doing anything differently of certain of the musical institutions they direct ).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

read: "I, Alpensinfonie, do not like the work of Sir Roger Norrington. Many other - well informed, highly musical - people do like the work of Sir Roger Norrington very much indeed."

But that isn't the point. It's the attitude behind it that I don't like. I often find performances that use period instruments fascinating. The ophicleide, however, is a hybrid instrument, like the keyed trumpet and the serpent. Having a foot in both camps doesn't always work.
Having read Berlioz's autobiography more than once, I'd be very surprised if he did not prefer the interpretations of Davis, Barbirolli and Stokowski. Sticking with the early 19th century sound (as some people think it was) would, for Berlioz, be like preferring Cherubini to Beethoven.

[Barbirollians]

I did find some of the HIPP movement or authenticists as they were known in the 1980s rather insufferably evangelical and narrow minded . Norrington was rather like that on occasion.

20 years on there seems to be much more give and take and reasoned consideration of these questions including by Norrington himself.

[Biffo]

I own the Norrington version and find it an interesting performance; there is an informative booklet with nothing narrow-minded about its arguments. However, I prefer the Gardiner version. While there is probably more give and take in the HIPP movement, Norrington himself has gone the other way; his latest obsession with vibrato-less performances being a case in point.

[Barbirollians]

I own the Norrington version and find it an interesting performance; there is an informative booklet with nothing narrow-minded about its arguments. However, I prefer the Gardiner version. While there is probably more give and take in the HIPP movement, Norrington himself has gone the other way; his latest obsession with vibrato-less performances being a case in point.

I had forgotten that Mahler 9 !

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I own the Norrington version and find it an interesting performance; there is an informative booklet with nothing narrow-minded about its arguments. However, I prefer the Gardiner version. While there is probably more give and take in the HIPP movement, Norrington himself has gone the other way; his latest obsession with vibrato-less performances being a case in point.

The thing about Norrington is that he wants others to follow him. Yet it often seems that he refuses point blank to listen to anyone else other than Leopold Mozart (who even his own son chose to ignore ).

[John Skelton]

Having read Berlioz's autobiography more than once, I'd be very surprised if he did not prefer the interpretations of Davis, Barbirolli and Stokowski. Sticking with the early 19th century sound (as some people think it was) would, for Berlioz, be like preferring Cherubini to Beethoven.

How on earth (or elsewhere, perhaps) do you work that out from reading Berlioz's autobiography? Why would it be "like preferring Cherubini to Beethoven"?

I'd suggest that Berlioz sought an expression of Romantic modernism akin to Nerval's in literature. That involved a very specific fascination with particular instruments which had particular sonic-poetic associations (like the cor anglais in Symphonie Fantastique). It was a modernism that made reference to a certain type of archaism - in poetry it finds its ironic apotheosis in Baudelaire's pastoral of the city.

If Berlioz was alive today & let loose on the instrumental & technological resources of today I'd be very surprised if you wouldn't hate the results. Because he would write modern music .

Having read Berlioz's autobiography more than once, I'd be very surprised if he did not prefer the interpretations of Davis, Barbirolli and Stokowski.

And you say that 'HIPP' performers think they know it al!

[Chris Newman]

A lot of Roger Norrington depends on how you came to him. I first heard him as a promising tenor singing with James Bowman. Then he appeared with his very fine amateur Heinrich Schutz Choir which later was replaced by the professional Schutz Choir of London. It was Kent Opera which convinced me that this was a man who meant to go places with music. Monteverdi, Purcell, Mozart, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Tippett, whoever RN made them something special. The tragedy for Kent Opera was Norrington wanted to move on in conducting and the Arts Council said WHO'S HE? when the young Ivan Fischer replaced him and they pulled the funding plug. Stupid bloody Arts Council.

I do not think RN has been a didact. He has had theories based on history (and those of his wife as a choreographer and director) and has experimented with them. Sometimes they are produce interesting, even beautiful, results: Ma Vlast, Mahler 9. Sometimes they do not work: Beethoven 9 for example. The Symphony Fantastique is interesting but JEG, Colin Davis and Beecham are more convincing.

Apart from his work with the Stuttgart orchestra which we have largely missed because we have lived here in Little Britain, Norrington has been as important to opera in Britain as Colin Davis, Edward Downes, Mark Elder, Bernard Haitink and Sir Charles Mackerras.

[Petrushka]

I was rather hopng that this thread wouldn't turn into a pro- and anti Norrington-battlefield.

Meanwhile to return to the Symphonie Fantastique...

Out of the 16 versions on my heaving shelves (a recount found two more lurking about) the following do not appear on the header list:

VPO/Gergiev
Bastille opera Orch/Chung
BBCSO/Andrew Davis
French National Orch/Bernstein
VPO/Colin Davis
Chicago SO/Solti
Chicago SO/Abbado
RPO/Massimo Freccia

The Solti is a particular favourite as is Muti who conjures up a real OTT finale that has a real unhinged quality that is spot on. The Freccia is on Chesky and was engineered in 1962 by Kenneth Wilkinson. A very fine perfiormance it is too.

Many years ago, I recall reading an article in Hi-fi News and Record Review entitled 'Hell's Bells and Hector Berlioz' which examined the different, odd and amusing methods employed both on record and in performance to capture the sound of the bells in the finale. Church bells, tubular bells and even pianos have been employed at one time or another. Anyone remember the BPO/Karajan which used real church bells...and behind which the traffic noise was clearly audible?

SJ could do a BaL on the bells alone!

[Alison]

There's a certain novelty about Zubin Mehta conducting the LPO.

To be honest, they play like gods for the old boy !