Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique (SACD review)

Also, Beatrice et Benedict overture. Robin Ticciati, Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Linn Records CKD 400.

Most of my favorite conductors in the Symphonie fantastique over the years have been older folk, people like Sir Thomas Beecham, Leonard Bernstein, Sir Colin Davis, Leopold Stokowski, John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Roger Norrington, Charles Munch, and Jean Martinon. So I thought it might be fun to hear what a relatively young man, Robin Ticciati, in his mid twenties and his Scottish Chamber Orchestra could do with this well-traveled warhorse. It becomes doubly fascinating when you consider that Berlioz was about Ticciati's age when he wrote the piece.

The composer, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), wrote his Symphonie fantastique in 1830, and it wasn't long before it became one of the most influential pieces of music of all time. With programmatic elements of predecessors like Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and using a huge orchestral arrangement for well over a hundred players (Berlioz employed about 130 musicians for the première), the result must have been extraordinary for its period. Yet the music remains extraordinary for our own time, too. In the work's five movements, the young Berlioz wrote autobiographically of the hopeless love of a young man for a woman, the young man falling into a drug-induced dream, which the composer describes in his music. The woman reappears throughout the Symphonie in the form of an idée fixe, a "fixed idea" the young man cannot shake, a musical innovation Berlioz used to advantage.

Ticciati begins "The Reveries--Passions" slowly and builds the tensions incrementally, finally gathering up a good head of steam and arriving at a rather imaginative and effective climax before the music falls back into the distant mists of the composer's mind. Very nice.

"The Ball" also holds up successfully, the waltz having an abundance of lilt and élan. If it's a tad more vigorous than we might usually hear it, chalk it up to youthful exuberance on Ticciati's part.

The third-movement scene in the fields comes across with an appropriate air of serene, pastoral longing. This leads to the final two movements, which have given so many audiophiles delight over the years.

In the "March to the Scaffold" the Scottish Chamber Orchestra does its best, yet there is no compensating for a full orchestra, and while they produce a commendably transparent sound, it isn't exactly the biggest sound needed in the music. Then, too, Ticciati seems more interested here in simply making the music exciting rather than particularly dramatic, sardonic, or amusing.

Finally, we come to "The Witches' Sabbath," which under Ticciati is not quite as scary as Bernstein made it nor as creative as Beecham conjured it up. Still, it's fun in a more jaunty sort of way. It works well enough as parody, and again Ticciati provides loads of enthusiasm, making the ending as thrilling as ever.

As a coupling, we get the Beatrice et Benedict overture, based in part on Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. Berlioz called the music "a caprice written with the point of a needle." It's light, sweet, lively, and exuberant by turns.

Made by Linn Records at Usher Hall, Edinburgh, UK, from October 7-11, 2011, for playback via hybrid stereo/multichannel SACD, the resultant sound is impressive largely because it's so lifelike. Using a Sony SACD player, I found the stereo layer produced a genuine sense of depth in the orchestra, a reasonably quick transient response, a strong impact (especially during those big bass wallops), ample clarity throughout the midrange, a wide stereo spread, and a fairly good extension of lows and highs. With plenty of warm, resonant air around the instruments, the sound is close to what a person might actually hear at a live event, at least as heard from a modest distance.

JJP