COMPOSERS: Berlioz
LABELS: Decca
WORKS: L’enfance du Christ; La mort de Cléopâtre; La mort d’Ophélie; Sara la baigneuse; Méditation religieuse
PERFORMER: Peter Pears, Edgar Fleet (tenor), Elsie Morison, Anne Pashley (soprano), John Cameron (baritone), Joseph Rouleau, John Frost (bass), St Anthony Singers, Goldsborough Orchestra, ECO/Colin Davis
CATALOGUE NO: 443 461-2 ADD (1961/68)
L’enfance du Christ is, like all of Berlioz’s large-scale works, something of a mixed bag. Colin Davis knew how to hold it together even in 1960, and this performance is graced by the presence of Peter Pears. But Davis’s Seventies LSO remake is in every way superior. The shorter works on offer here suffer from woolly choral singing, and Anne Pashley is an insufficiently commanding Cleopatra. Decca deserves a black mark for providing no texts. Stephen Maddock
Berlioz: L'enfance du Christ; La mort de Cléopâtre; La mort d'Ophélie; Sara la baigneuse; Méditation religieuse
L’enfance du Christ is, like all of Berlioz’s large-scale works, something of a mixed bag. Colin Davis knew how to hold it together even in 1960, and this performance is graced by the presence of Peter Pears. But Davis’s Seventies LSO remake is in every way superior. The shorter works on offer here suffer from woolly choral singing, and Anne Pashley is an insufficiently commanding Cleopatra. Decca deserves a black mark for providing no texts. Stephen Maddock
Our rating
3
Published: January 20, 2012 at 3:15 pm