Search - Berlioz, Karajan :: Karajan Conducts Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

A Performance that Breaths of the Pure Vergilian

Doug - Haydn Fan | California | 09/24/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"One of the finest recordings made by Karajan during his association with the original Philharmonia, and a testament to his poetic sensiblities. I don't think Karajan ever made a more distinquished orchestral recording than these Berlioz works. Noble, elevated, and inspiring, these mark the high water mark of high fidelity engineering before the age of stereo swept all such things into a long oblivion for most listeners.



Today, despite innumerable brilliant stereo versions of Berlioz, these Karajan performances still manage to reflect the marvelous sympathy Berlioz - who was always as much a classicist as wild-eyed Romantic - imagined for the epic vision of Vergil. In the great music for the Royal Hunt and Storm the strings blend together with a majesty today's orchestras rarely achieve. You hold your breath as the music's long lines are sustained through the most exacting diminuendoes, while the wonderfully played horn calls sound not so much from the back of the orchestra as evocative scene-painting, not Romantic, but part and parcel of a grand landscape tableau out of Poussin.



This is a classic in the truest sense of the word, and manages the remarkable feat of offering sublime playing as compensation for overcoming the lack of stereo in this most stereophonic of composers. A noble issue, and it's to be hoped one that might be offered again at a budget price for those curious to hear the levels of music-making created by EMI's early pre-stereo tandem of Karajan and the Philharmonia.



The recent Karajan DG issues of Berlioz fall far short of the exalted conception found here."

Classic Karajan

Michael B. Richman | Portland, Maine USA | 07/31/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Once upon a time, in the days before the advent of stereo, this account of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique by Herbert von Karajan and the Philharmonia Orchestra was regarded as the definitive recording. Of course this 1954 performance was supplanted shortly by Charles Munch's stereo version on RCA, but today it remains, along with Van Beinum's (which was recently included in his "Original Masters" boxed set -- see my review), as a jewel of the great, late mono era. The remaining Berlioz pieces by Karajan and the Philharmonia are all in stereo, recorded in 1958 & '59. All of the Karajan Edition EMI CDs seem to be succumbing slowly to the silent deletion axe, so interested parties should act fast to acquire this title."