# Berlioz - Op. 14 - Symphonie Fantastique



## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

How do you rate this symphony and what are the best recordings?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Extraordinary masterpiece. Best recordings: Munch (all of them). But not his recording from Hungary (the orchestra is dreadful). The work doesn't lack superb recordings. Some of my other faves: Bernstein, Ormandy, Markevitch, Martinon and Dorati. The best sounding is also fortunately matched with a superb performance: Maazel with the Cleveland Orchestra on Telarc.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Never understood people who didn't like the slow movement. It's a pastoral movement combined with a psychotic breakdown!


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

Don’t you find it strange that there are opium hallucinations in the music?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Waehnen said:


> Don’t you find it strange that there are opium hallucinations in the music?


Berlioz Takes A Trip! I bought the Bernstein record over 50 years ago because it came with a bonus 7 inch record where he talked about Berlioz' tripping. This was the Age of Aquarius, the hippy movement and LSD. Nah...I never found it strange.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

mbhaub said:


> Berlioz Takes A Trip! I bought the Bernstein record over 50 years ago because it came with a bonus 7 inch record where he talked about Berlioz' tripping. This was the Age of Aquarius, the hippy movement and LSD. Nah...I never found it strange.


Must have been the times! 😉

I am happy with the occasional white wine and some imaginative music, please. No need for opium or LSD. 

Dunno. I have always been against the drugs. They made me read a horrible book as a teenager — about a mother losing her 2 sons for drugs. Had nightmares for weeks. My grandmother said after having a look at my summer reading: ”That ain’t a book for children!”


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

The _Symphonie fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un artiste … en cinq parties_ (_Fantastical Symphony: Episode in the Life of an Artist … in Five Sections_) Op.14, remains one of the most original musical masterpieces of all time. It's sometimes hard to believe it dates back to 1830, well before Debussy and Ravel, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin. When one considers what its great contemporary musical works are (including Mendelssohn's _Reformation_ Symphony, George Onslow's Symphony No. 1, Chopin's First Piano Concerto, Schumann's "Abegg" Variations) the work seems all the more remarkable. I lament that Beethoven did not have the opportunity to hear this work; I think he would have appreciated it. To quote a rather understated line in the Wikipedia article on this symphony: "It is an important piece of the early Romantic period."

I still recall my first hearing of this symphony, on a vinyl disc from Audio Fidelity featuring Alfred Wallenstein conducting the Virtuoso Symphony of London.










The work blew me away. I've never been the same in my musical consciousness. 

I still have that well-worn record in my collection, though I've added some two dozen other interpretations. I tend to enjoy the symphony, when I revisit it, but I don't turn to it too often in these past couple of decades of my musical listening. I probably overdid this work in my youth, but actually I've never been a strong fan of Berlioz, though I recognize and appreciate his genius. Still, I rank this symphony high, and it deserves hearing. It certainly deserves a recent hearing in my own listening room, which I will surely give it soon, likely with the disc featuring Rico Saccani, a reading I've been meaning to return to after my initial listen some couple of years back.










But I do have quite a few choices, and I can even listen to them all should I wish. I'm still here, my ears are still working, and so is my stereo equipment. 

My best advice might be: one needn't be on hallucinatory drugs or medications in order to fully enjoy this masterpiece of thematic originality, trail-blazing symphonic form, and orchestrational genius. It remains, simply enough, "an important piece of the early Romantic period" and thus cannot be ignored.


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

In addition to the Munch recordings, there's a great recording by Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra on EMI, er, Warner.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

HansZimmer said:


> How do you rate this symphony and what are the best recordings?


Can't say I have heard all of the recordings out there(?!?), but the "Fantastique" was the first piece of classical music I ever fell in love with. My parents had three recordings of it: Beecham (1958), Perlea (1959) and Davis (1974). I think Beecham was probably the one I fell for. Since then I have added two modern digital recordings to my collection, both of which are excellent in every regard (performance and recording): Dutoit (1985) and Maazel (1982). Of the two, I think Maazel gives the more lyrical interpretation. Plus, it's a Telarc, as mbhaub mentions above.


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

wkasimer said:


> In addition to the Munch recordings, there's a great recording by Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra on EMI, er, Warner.


Yes! That one is my single most listened to recording of any music whatsoever over the last couple of years, if my media player is to be believed.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

How can anyone not love this masterpiece?


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

I love the last 2 mvts...2 and 3 are ok-good...
Wonderful orchestration in final 3 mvts....
Favorites -
Solti/CSO ×2 - 70s, 90s, both superb, incredible execution...
Mitropoulos/NYPO is terrific also...Mitropoulos gets into the "creepy" aspect, so well....
Not a big fan of Munch...march is too fast, rhythm tends to break down...also, kind of sloppy.. Munch loved ro be spontaneous, try surprises at performances....exciting in the moment, but the sloppy stuff doesn't bear up so well on recording/repeated listening...imo, of course...


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Waehnen said:


> Don’t you find it strange that there are opium hallucinations in the music?


Both Berlioz and Wagner were not strangers to Laudanum, aka opium dissolved in alchohol. It was "medicinal". It may account for some of the "progressiveness" of the progressives.


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## Oldhoosierdude (May 29, 2016)

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I like this recording by Talmi in 95. I also have Boulez and Mackerras. All fine with Boulez as the best of the bunch.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I listen to it rarely, and maybe for that reason it astonishes me every time I return to it. I feel the equivalent of "Where the **** did he get this stuff?" In fact he took parts of it from his earlier _Messe solennelle_, composed in 1824 when Berlioz was only 20. That makes the originality even more gobsmacking.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Very good but who is the best...... so many good recordings. I think I go for Muti - Yannick Nézet-Séguin-Karajan and Bernstein on Sony.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

We went to the concert once when Symphonié Fastastique was performed in Berlin. It was one of the greatest concerts I´ve been to. I remember being thrilled and shocked by the instruments playing behind the audience. It was a true *ERLEBNIS* (my favourite German word).

For some reason I have only one recording of it: Sir Colin Davis with Vienna Philharmonic. But I remember having done some research before the purchase. It was supposed to be one of the best recordings. Sounds good to me, playing it right now, actually.

Having been composed right after Beethoven´s death and at the time of Mendelssohn´s The Hebrides and the Scottish Symphony, a few years after Schubert´s 9th. Yes, it must have been revolutionary.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Heck148 said:


> I love the last 2 mvts...2 and 3 are ok-good...
> Wonderful orchestration in final 3 mvts....


I think the best movement is the first and the best of this probably the introduction but unlike "Harold" the remainder keeps up reasonably well although the last two movements can seem a bit silly (like an old fashioned horror movie) and the scene aux champs can be a bit too long in some interpretations.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

It's a great work. Don't forget the Beecham recording .... or indeed one of those by Colin Davis. The recording by Les Siècles is also well worth hearing.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Not mentioned is the various editions of the Symphonie Fantastique. Berlioz changed some of the scoring over the years; not only the cornet ad lib part. Some performances add a cymbal crash on the last note; others omit it. Berlioz changed the original ophicleide part to tuba. If you've never heard a HIP version, you will find it fascinating. The Norrington version from EMI is well-recorded and allows the changes to be heard relatively clearly. The Maazel uses the cornet part. And by coincidence, today I got the programming for one of my orchestras and I need to get practicing: the Symphonie Fantastique. The last movement has some really tricky bassoon writing.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

mbhaub said:


> Not mentioned is the various editions of the Symphonie Fantastique. Berlioz changed some of the scoring over the years; not only the cornet ad lib part. Some performances add a cymbal crash on the last note; others omit it. Berlioz changed the original ophicleide part to tuba. If you've never heard a HIP version, you will find it fascinating. The Norrington version from EMI is well-recorded and allows the changes to be heard relatively clearly. *The Maazel uses the cornet part*. And by coincidence, today I got the programming for one of my orchestras and I need to get practicing: the Symphonie Fantastique. The last movement has some really tricky bassoon writing.


...as do the Martinon and Klemperer (!!) recordings (but I think that Martinon makes it too prominent.)


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I need to get that Klemperer. It just seems so out of his usual repertoire. Like the Tchaikovsky 5th, which as it turns out is terrific.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

^^His _late career_ repertoire, you don't have to go back very far to find all sorts of interesting things ... Janacek, Gershwin, Hindemith...


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