Dave's Faves No. 216 (Berlioz)

[@edfromlongisland2623]

I was able to download the recording from Presto. It is an excellent recording! Thanks for the recommendation!

[@tenorette2003]

Roméo et Juliette was the first work of Berlioz I heard as a young guy of 13 or 14 years and I fell in love with it immediatly. The mix of orchestral and vocal parts fascinated me extremly. Especially the Alto aria "Premiers transports..." and the fugue in the Ouverture took me to heaven. It was the recording with Barenboim and Orchestre de Paris, Yvonne Minton etc. I listen to it still quite sometimes but will give surely a shot for Ozawa. Thank you!

[@christopherwilliams9270]

The slow movement/love scene is also the (or at least an) inspiration for Tristan und Isolde

[@classicalperformances8777]

ironic, considering how Wagner judged Berlioz

[@christopherwilliams9270]

This has been my reference recording of R e J since I was a young teen, and one of my favorite of all recordings.

[@tuttifrutti2229]

Yes, it almost feels cantata the first part, symphonic the second and operatic the final. Still the middle part is a marvel of orchestration genius…

[@curseofmillhaven1057]

I've always enjoyed the Dutoit on Decca - although his Berlioz was patchy, for me this R & J is a beautifully realised conception, sumptuously recorded,played and sung (gossamer like textures in Queen Mab). I'm also rather fond of Inbal on Denon (last available in Brilliant Classics Inbal/Berlioz box. I'll certainly check out Ozawa though for sure.

[@bbailey7818]

Happy ending but we do have the death of the lovers to music which sounds avant-garde to this day. Berlioz's note in the score at that point is my favorite composer direction ever: "The general public has no imagination. Therefore, pieces which appeal solely to the imagination have no public." Whereupon he advised omitting it, unthinkable now. But he knew that Parisian public!

[@marcpeycker]

Ozawa's version is an absolute must and, speaking of the finale, it has the very best of them with a stunning José Van Dam. No other singer comes even close for this piece, and there are quite a few good ones! All that being said, the James Levine version with the Berliner Philharmoniker is as good as Ozawa's (except for the finale! 😄)

[@bloodgrss]

Thanks for this, Dave; have been longing for you to cover one of my favorite works for a long time! I was playing the Prince of Verona in a college production of Romeo and Juliet (Berlioz depicts his stentorian rant in the beginning with marvelous brass), and have loved it in whole or in parts since that time. My first recording was the Monteux with the LSO on a budget LP. This Ozawa is certainly my own go-to as well; for once I am on the side of you and the angels... I think the ending to modern ears is rather anti-climatic and a bit prolix; how can anything be otherwise after the death of the lovers in the orchestral miracle of color and rhythm Berlioz takes them out in? But in his day, and with his failure with Benvenutto Cellini in the Opera house, the 'Meyerbeer-ian' finish was perhaps expected, and perhaps another opportunity to 'prove' his Operatic chops to the public? At any rate, we can certainly rate it highly not just for it's exciting entirety (in my opinion some of the greatest music ever written), but for the influence it had. Not simply the famous Bernstein example of Wagner 'cribbing' a bit from it for Tristan, but we know for certain Wagner was blown away by the playing, color, and the originality of using the orchestra in ways Wagner had never dreamed. Much of music 100 years hence might be said to find roots in it. Ultimately, and typically for him, Wagner became critical of much of what Berlioz did and was, but this work (and Harold in Italy) certainly influenced and inspired him (with Liszt as well). And, that early debt was remembered, despite their general antipathy to each other in later years, when Wagner commented to his wife Cosima when he heard of Berlioz death that the French should "build a statue to him!"

[@edfromlongisland2623]

Interesting talk! Thanks for the recommendation! This recording is just about impossible to find without buying an Ozawa "complete" box which I'm not inclined to do. Any other suggestions?

[@ahartify]

I love the Ozawa version, but I first heard it with Gardelli on Orfeo. The Gardelli version has always stuck with me, for some reason.

[@michaelhartman8724]

Berlioz was indeed a smart guy. Actually, the Russians (Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky) do not portray the end of Shakespeare's R & J accurately. (This obviously does not negate the glories of these scores.) Many scholars emphasize that Elizabethan England was really less into artistic romance/sex than they were into political intrigue (see people like Samuel Pepys and Alexander Pope). Shakespeare's actual ending doesn't end with Prokofiev's "Juliet's Funeral and Death" but a reconciliation of the family politics. The story may be "woeful," but the prince at the end of the play says there is a "glooming peace this morning..." not jolly, but not totally nihilistic I believe as a result that Berlioz' ending is more accurate, though I certainly agree with Dave's point that musical effect is more important than all of this.

[@edwinbaumgartner5045]

Well, being from Vienna, I have no problem with the happy ending. In fact, Kaiser Joseph II, who was the son of Maria Theresia, ordered that on his theatre, the Burgtheater, all plays have had to end happily. And so, Ophelia married Hamlet, Julia married Romeo and King Lear had to reign during a long and happy life. After the Kaiser's death, one returned to the original endings. That said, in my opinion the Berlioz-"Romeo" is a masterpiece! It's an experiment: an imaginary opera, the voices of the protagonists are the orchestra, the listener has to add words and scenery in his fantasy. That's why I like this piece so much: It is completely crazy, creating it's own form observing neither the rules of opera nor those of concert music. Besides, Wagner cribbed a lot from this score. The Ozawa recording is wonderful, indeed, and so is the late Davis. But you're right: There's no completely satisfying recording. I was hoping or Boulez because of the experimental character of the work, but it's much too dry. So I returned to Ozawa and Davis, whom I prefer for being better balanced, as far as I remember. Nevertheless - a great and much too underrated work.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

So I guess it was the Kaiser who didn't follow his own proclamation!

[@michaelhartman8724]

So much for an empire that conducted politics through marriage rather than military conquest. Rumor has it that Emperor Franz Joseph of WW I fame used to complain about Mahler shushing inattentive audiences because people really didn't want to sit quietly at a concert and have their lives changed by the music, but were more interested in having a good time at a Sunday matinee. a jolly outlook...tough luck it all got smashed to ashes by 1919.

[@jaykauffman4775]

Your thoughts on the Munch?? I have it in the gorgeous Soria box

[@moby628]

I'll give you my thoughts. It is my reference recording! Whenever I compare with the other quality performances of this piece, I always go to Part ll, and especially the ending of it, where the dramatic precision of Munch is unmatched. Ozawa here at the same spot is a muddy mess imo. I like the Ozawa overall (singers and all) but find the sonics to be over reverberant, a contrast to the same Symphony Hall Munch had in 1961, where the sound is clear and up front. Munch's pacing is spontaneous and electrifying. I love the urgency of the love scene (13') and the incredible mergence of the Friar and chorus at the end. The intro is slower than most, but since when does the human race fight so fast, as in most recordings ie Muti, Davis, Boulet and Davis!

[@mickeytheviewmoo]

Dave, just wondering if you are going to do one of your ideal lists of Berlioz Overtures? Might be a bit of fun for us Berlioz nuts.

[@owengette8089]

Dave, I think it would be fascinating if you did a series-or at least a video- about Major key pieces ending in minor, kind of in line with your quiet ending video. There are enough to keep the series alive, and they all happen in different ways. A great video, as always.

[@matthewbbenton]

This is off-topic, but since you mentioned the pitfall of over-criticizing a performance because you happen to dislike the work: I’d enjoy a talk about what makes good musical criticism. What are the other traps you have to avoid? How do you manage your own biases? Anything you’d like to share about the process would be interesting. (In your previous video about how you became a critic, you speak briefly about this topic - so if you feel there’s nothing more to add, that’s fine!)