Search - Franz Joseph Haydn, Hector Berlioz, Bruno Walter :: Bruno Walter in Paris

The patina of age

07/07/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Somehow I think that the patina of age has made us think these recordings are better than they really are...but since Bruno Walter's involved, we're more likely to listen around some antiquities than we would otherwise.Walter didn't spend a lot of time in Paris...the city's aesthetic (if you will) wasn't all that friendly to him. It took some courage for him to program the Berlioz; the advocacy of Paul Paray had made the work pretty much his (and his associates') piece. Nevertheless, Walter gives it his usual treatment of quick tempi, no repeats, and good old fashioned drama. The orchestra responds in kind, but sloppily. It's hard to believe that this kind of execution was typical of the old Conservatoire orchestra before Carl Schuricht arrived in the late 1940s. The same approximate attacks, staccato-phrasing, gulps and warbles that passed for character plagued Munch and Weingartner, too. So the slop--or style if you believe it--becomes more noticeable as the drama gets all hotted up.The Haydn is no more tidy, but somehow it doesn't bother you as much. Old Haydn can come through lots of liabilities and the charm is turned on full-force here. It turns out to be a fun performance, sprightly and dance-like, full of melody and dignity, despite the allowances you have to make.Buy this as a curiosity or for some plain fun, historical listening. The sound isn't bad (better than the 78 and LP-transfer antecedents) and it allows you to listen in on a couple of Walter's more obscure leavings."

An enraptured moment of divine madness!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 06/29/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Who can deny the tremendous importance of what Fantastic Symphony has signified along all those years?. The audacious of its formal construction, the relentless "fixed idea" beneath its score, his unmeasured love for Henrietta Simpson, the formidable depictions of its ceaseless creative mind made of it the most qualified Symphony the Romanticism ever knew. Indeed, this score encloses a lofty stoicism, enraptured mystery's atmosphere, refined elegance and iconoclast conception. A piece bathed in a sea of an intoxicated dream that flows with untamed energy and luxurious conception.



That symphony constitutes ( to my mind) the most notable transition between the classic Symphony and the Symphonic poem, because it' s nourished by evanescent, missing and incorporeal motives that seems to suggests themselves, reappearing with frenetic rage, specially in the last two movements where the Dies Irae works out as an accelerating catalyst to express with magisterial and meridian clarity the divine exultation and the apex of the Romantic breadth.



There are many thundering versions, but there is just a handful of unsurpassed performances which deserve the supreme qualifying title of sublime.



And this is one of them; so please don't miss it!





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