Berlioz reviews

The concept of cultural appropriation was mercifully unknown to the composers of 19th-century France. We can therefore sit back and enjoy their daydreams in Mirages, compiled around visions of faraway or imaginary lands and people, dominated by Oriental exoticism. Sabine Devieilhe’s voice is shown off to stunning effect as she and her colleagues bring together the (sometimes) kitschier side of eastern longings and the lingering influence of such sounds on more intriguing music. 

Performing Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique on period instruments was regarded as a radical, if not downright potty idea when Roger Norrington made his pioneering 1989 recording. As soon became clear, though, this colourful, arch-Romantic fantasy is fertile territory for historically informed performance. Berlioz’s orchestral imagination is as precisely nuanced as the scenario is wildly febrile, his wide palette and expanded instrumental resources ensuring the differences of timbre and practice are readily apparent.

In little more than a decade Marianne Crebassa has established herself in the first rank of a new generation of mezzo-sopranos. A former Paris Opera young artist, she sings at Salzburg and Berlin as well as in Paris, and has already made her American debut in Chicago.

This is a useful disc of warhorses, played with all the stops
out, but luscious as well as fierce in
the conductor’s best period. Wonderful Tchaikovsky and Sibelius in particular.

Michael Tanner