Classical Music

The present release contains Hector Berlioz's complete concert overtures, including the one written for his early opera Les francs-juges, superbly performed by the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg directed by the French conductor Sylvain Cambreling. French composer Hector Berlioz wrote a number of overtures, many of which remain concert staples. They include not only overtures intended to introduce operas, but also independent concert overtures. The album opens with one of the most popular overtures, Waverly, Op. 1. Composed in 1828, it was inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly novels. Also included are Le Carnaval romain, Op. 9, a standalone overture intended for concert performance made up of material from the opera Benvenuto Cellini, Le Corsaire, Op. 21, and others. This album is part of a new re-release series (Century Classics) consisting of SWR music bestsellers. The series is competitively priced, optically highly attractive and contains acclaimed SWR recordings mostly of the SWR orchestras and their chief conductors.

Through the eye of French director Laurent Pelly this expression of Berlioz's undying admiration for the Bard - his adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing as an opera comique - becomes ''an elegant treatise on love and music designed in shades of grey with 50's-era costumes'' (Sunday Express). Housed by designer Barbara de Limburg in a series of oversized boxes, it's ''terribly chic, terribly pretty'' (The Spectator). Soaring over the ''warmly graceful playing of the London Philharmonic'', Paul Appleby sings ''attractively'' as Benedict and Stephanie d'Oustrac ''makes a marvellously wiry and fiery Beatrice, singing with charm and acting with gusto'' (The Telegraph).

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REVIEW:

Antonello Manacorda is a natural-sounding guide to the stage events shown here. His cast sound and work together naturally. Stéphanie D’Oustrac (an expressive face to enjoy in close-up) and Paul Appleby (carefully less histrionic in duet) spar well. The Ursule of Katarina Bradic´ is quite a find, more comfortable with notes and character than Sophie Karthäuser’s Héro, accurate but less ethereal than ideal. The men do well, although Lionel Lhote’s effortful Somarone the music-master, falling everywhere on a sliding table in Act 2, will not be to everyone’s comic taste—but that may be Berlioz’s fault in falling (for once) for the cliché that audiences have always seemed to find onstage musical jokes especially hysterical.

Despite some reservations, this only official DVD to date of such an important opera, well recorded and filmed in a slick modern production, deserves a place in the catalogue and on your shelves.

– Gramophone

Also available on standard DVD

With his affinity for the 16th-century sculptor Benvenuto Cellini’s advocacy of artistic and personal freedom, Hector Berlioz went straight for the grand gesture with his first completed opera. Returning to it years after initial production debacles, Berlioz stated that he would ‘never again find such verve and Cellinian impetuosity, nor such a variety of ideas.’ The plot revolves around Cellini’s wooing of Teresa, a match frustrated at every opportunity by his rival, the cowardly Fieramosca. Benvenuto Cellini is a pithy work combining romance, excitement, violence, comedy and spectacle; the perfect stage for Terry Gilliam’s stylishly colorful and larger than life directing.

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DETAILS:

Format: NTSC
Language: French
Subtitles: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean
Dubbed: None
Region: All Regions
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Run Time: 180 minutes

Robin Ticciati’s recording debut, Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, received rave reviews: it was named Critics’ Choice ‘Sound of 2012’ (The Independent), ‘Classical CD of the Week’ (The Sunday Times), ‘Disc of the Week’ (BBC Radio 3 ‘Record Review’) and was #3 in The Sunday Times’ Best Classical Albums of 2012 list. Ticciati brings out the deep colours and emotions of this composition while balancing the orchestra and keeping the pace to create an impressive and dynamic sound throughout, showing similar flair to that of his teacher the great Berliozian Sir Colin Davis. The works of Berlioz have featured prominently in Ticciati’s programmes with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra since he was appointed Principal Conductor in 2009 earning critical acclaim. With this recording Ticciati succeeds in his aim to offer audiences ‘a thought-provoking and new way of listening to the piece’. With a performance of this calibre it is easy to see why Symphonie Fantastique continues to be one of the most popular early Romantic compositions with today’s audiences.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Hector Berlioz
LES TROYENS

Énée – Lance Ryan
Chorèbe – Gabriele Viviani
Panthée – Giorgio Giuseppini
Narbal – Stephen Milling
Iopas – Eric Cutler
Ascagne – Oksana Shilova
Cassandre – Elisabete Matos
Didon – Daniele Barcellona
Anna – Zlata Bulycheva

Valencia Regional Government Choir (Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana)
Valencian Community Orchestra (Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana)
Valery Gergiev, conductor

La Fura dels Baus, staging
Carlus Padrissa, stage director
Ronald Olbeter, stage designer
Peter van Praet, lighting designer
Chu Uroz, costume designer

Recorded live from the Palau de les Arts “Reina Sofia”, Valencia, Spain, 2009.

Bonus:
- The making of Les Troyens

Picture format: 1080p High Definition
Sound format: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: French, English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 240 mins (opera) + 21 mins (documentary)
No. of Discs: 2

"Ancient myth meets Star Wars, and the eye is constantly engaged with images ranging from space-age technology to details of soccer uniforms." The New York Times

"This is a worthy and compelling, glittering version of a sublime work." International Herald Tribune

Also available on Blu-ray

Hector Berlioz
LES TROYENS

Énée – Lance Ryan
Chorèbe – Gabriele Viviani
Panthée – Giorgio Giuseppini
Narbal – Stephen Milling
Iopas – Eric Cutler
Ascagne – Oksana Shilova
Cassandre – Elisabete Matos
Didon – Daniele Barcellona
Anna – Zlata Bulycheva

Valencia Regional Government Choir (Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana)
Valencian Community Orchestra (Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana)
Valery Gergiev, conductor

La Fura dels Baus, staging
Carlus Padrissa, stage director
Ronald Olbeter, stage designer
Peter van Praet, lighting designer
Chu Uroz, costume designer

Recorded live from the Palau de les Arts “Reina Sofia”, Valencia, Spain, 2009.

Bonus:
- The making of Les Troyens

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: French, English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 240 mins (opera) + 21 mins (documentary)
No. of DVDs: 2 (DVD 9)

"Ancient myth meets Star Wars, and the eye is constantly engaged with images ranging from space-age technology to details of soccer uniforms." The New York Times

"This is a worthy and compelling, glittering version of a sublime work." International Herald Tribune

SOMM Recordings continues it's much-admired and long-running series The Beecham Collection with it's 35th release of live recordings by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The recording highlights the operatic side of Beecham with orchestral excerpts from Les Troyens and La Damnation de Faust by Hector Berlioz, and Tannh�user, Parsifal, G�tterd�mmerung, and Die Meistersinger von N�rnberg by Richard Wagner. Producer and audio engineer Lani Spahr, whose work for SOMM on Elgar from the Archives has been described by Gramophone Magazine as "astounding" and "revelatory," is once again responsible for the audio restoration on this release. The professional debut of Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart., C.H. took place on 6 December 1899 in St Helen's Town Hall when he was twenty years old. He conducted the Hungarian March from La Damnation de Faust by Berlioz with the Hall� Orchestra, and the music of Berlioz was to become one of the cornerstones of his repertoire for the next six decades. This present recording of the Hungarian March is a gloriously uninhibited performance that brought the house down at the end of a 1955 concert at the Royal Festival Hall. That concert also included two excerpts from Les Troyens by Berlioz. The Prelude to The Trojans at Carthage is followed by The Royal Hunt and Storm, with the Oxford Bach Choir providing the brief choral contribution from Nymphs, Sylvans, and Fauns. These performances are remarkable for their atmospheric poetry in the slower sections and the rampaging energy in the faster music. During the same year as his professional debut, a young Beecham made his pilgrimage to Bayreuth, and he became an enthusiastic, instinctual conductor of Wagner's music. The renowned music critic Neville Cardus once noted that, while German conductors tended to take a reflective and philosophical approach in interpreting Wagner, Sir Thomas concentrated on the dramatic and picturesque parts of the music. This concentration on colour and drama makes his conducting of the orchestral extracts included on this release both satisfying and full of character. These four orchestral excerpts were recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on 17 December 1958. The concert opened with the Overture and Venusberg Music from Tannh�user; for decades one of Beecham's warhorses as a concert opener. Orchestral excerpts from Parsifal appeared regularly on Beecham's concert programmes, and this 1958 concert featured the Good Friday Music. Beecham conducted a number of Ring cycles during his career, and his affinity with the music shines through in this recording of Siegfried's Rhine Journey from G�tterd�mmerung. This release closes with the Prelude to Act One of Die Meistersinger, about which the review in the Daily Telegraph said, "the thickly overlaid texture of the overture can seldom have been given with such golden clarity."

London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Colin Davis. Philips 416 430-2 [Overtures: Roman Carnival, Benvenuto Cellini, Le corsaire, Le roi Lear, Les francs-juges, Waverly] (recorded 1965).

Davis and the London Symphony get a strong nod for Berlioz’s overtures, which they perform with great panache and striking brilliance and beauty of tone. The recording, considering its age almost miraculously fresh sounding, is impeccably detailed and well balanced. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

Burkhard Fritz, Laurent Naouri, Brindley Sherratt, Mikhail Petrenko, Maija Kovalevska, Philippp Stoezl, and Kate Aldrich star in this Vienna State Opera/Vienna Philharmonic production of the Berlioz opera conducted by Valery Gergiev.

Immensely influential, the remarkable Symphonie fantastique was composed while Hector Berlioz was suffering an intense and unreciprocated passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Its autobiographical tale describes a young musician’s opium-poisoned nightmares of jealous despair and fatal justice following the murder of his beloved. Berlioz wrote a second movement cornet solo into a subsequent revision of the score, here included as an optional extra. He wed his sweetheart actress but, recuperating in Nice, wrote Le corsaire after the final break-up of their marriage.

"Berlioz, to me, in terms of sheer orchestral invention, anticipates Mahler. If anything, he even surpasses him. So these are some of the things that characterise Berlioz: the extremes, the dynamics, the sound, the colours of the orchestra. Ravel was more about homogenisation. And I mean that in an entirely positive sense, because he’s taking the orchestral palette and really thinking very carefully about the essence of instrumental sonorities and how they go together." – Leonard Slatkin

This budget-priced set includes two of the popular 19th century composer's early and most recognized masterpieces, the Symphonie Fantastique and Romeo et Juliette, with Charles Munch and the BSO.

“[Ehnes] is the protagonist in this all-Berlioz programme, but the disc is equally distinguished by the lucid, exhilarating, smoothly contoured playing of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under that experienced Berliozian Sir Andrew Davis.” - The Daily Telegraph (UK)

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The nine-time Juno-winning Canadian James Ehnes is centre stage in a new recording of orchestral works by Berlioz, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. This recording was made following an extraordinary concert in November 2014 with the same forces, in which James Ehnes played two instruments made by Stradivarius, respectively a viola in the solo part of Harold en Italie – ‘symphony with a principal viola part’, in Berlioz’s words – and a violin in the solo of Rêverie et Caprice, both of which works feature here.

Berlioz was never ashamed to recycle his music from one work to another, especially when the earlier work had been rejected by the public or by the composer himself. In 1834, Paganini asked Berlioz for a work in which he could display his prowess on a fine Stradivarius viola. Berlioz then composed the four-movement symphony Harold en Italie, incorporating passages from the Rob-Roy overture which he had recently rejected.

Similarly, Rêverie et Caprice was the form eventually given to an aria from the opera Benvenuto Cellini, unceremoniously booed in Paris in 1838. Berlioz transformed the aria into a piece with solo violin three years later. It is the only piece Berlioz ever wrote for solo violin. - Chandos

Digital CD 16Bit 44.1Khz and originally recorded in: 24Bit 96Khz.

Of all Berlioz's Shakespeare-inspired works, Romeo et Juliette is unquestionably his masterpiece. It is also cast in an innovative new form, a kind of 'super-symphony' that incorporates elements of symphony, opera and oratorio. Berlioz composed no singing roles for the central characters, but allowed others to comment or narrate, giving latitude to incarnate the lovers in a musical language of extraordinary delicacy and passion. The vivid 'Ball Scene' and 'Romeo at the Capulet tomb' are intensely dramatic but the heart of the work is the 'Love Scene,' a long symphonic poem which Richard Wagner called 'the melody of the 19th century.'

Renowned for his interpretation of the French repertoire, Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot and the orchestra are joined by acclaimed tenor Kenneth Tarver, a "voice of considerable beauty and freedom" (Washington Post) in a masterful performance of Hector Berlioz's momentous Requiem. The first performance of Hector Berlioz's Grande messe des morts, or Requiem, took place in Paris in 1837. It was one of the high points of it's author's career, but this triumph did not come easily. Still in his early 30s, Berlioz was widely considered the untamed radical among French composers, and the conservative bureaucrats who controlled the Paris Opera, the Conservatoire and other musical institutions saw fit to place obstacles in his path whenever they could. Kenneth Tarver is considered one of the outstanding Bel Canto tenors of his generation, acknowledged for his beauty of tone, virtuosic technique, extensive and even vocal range, coupled with an attractive and elegant stage presence.

Bernstein Conducts Berlioz

Hector Berlioz‘ Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie was a sequel to his Symphonie fantastique, the second part of the Episode of the life of an artist, which had premiered in 1830 at the Paris Conservatory. The piece that is made up of six sections was written and composed during his travels to and in Italy; for this he made use in part of material that he had already prefabricated for the prestigious Rome Prize. Berlioz and the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, whose rejection he had tried to compensate in the Symphonie fantastique, got married in 1833. (It should be noted that marriage by no means turned out to be the fulfillment of all dreams.) In his memoirs about Lélio’s premiere performance in December 1832 at the Paris Conservatory, Berlioz noted the following phrases about his future wife: “... the passionate character of the work, its ardent melodies, its exclamations of love, its outbursts of anger [...] must have made an unexpected and deep impression on her sensitive nature and poetic imagination. [...] When in the monodrama the actor Bocage, who recited the role of Lélio (that is, myself), pronounced the following words: ‘Oh, if I could only find her, the Juliet, the Ophelia for whom my heart is searching!’ […] she thought to herself: ‘My God! ... Juliet, Ophelia ... there’s no doubt, he means me ... And he still loves me as before …’” Michael Gielen conducts the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Wiener Singakademie with Herbert Lippert and Geert Smits as highly acclaimed soloists and Joachim Bissmeier as narrator in an absorbing live capture that took place on 7 Dec 2000 at the Vienna Concert Hall.

Berlioz Rottrerdam PO/Nezet-Seguin,Antonacci Symphonie fantastique; Cleopatre

The flamboyant destiny of the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, a misunderstood genius, gave Berlioz the energy to compose his first opera in 1836. It allowed him to identify with the hero of his work: a monumental struggle to create an extraordinary statue, Roman intrigues (well known to Berlioz who had just returned from Villa Medici) and the murder committed by the sculptor arouse dazzling pages in the composer. The powerful choirs evoking the Roman crowds or goldsmiths and the incredibly daring orchestral parts seem utterly innovative. The difficulties of interpretation and the monumentality of Benvenuto Cellini make him a monster both feared and admired. Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his cohort of musicians, all accomplished devotees of Berlioz, are celebrating the year of Berlioz with a presentation of this legendary piece, in a specially staged version, with the title role performed by today’s most spellbinding singer, the tenor Michael Spyres, surrounded by a dizzying distribution. The opera is performed on the historic 1837 set, recreated specially in the Royal Opera: the perfect setting for Benvenuto Cellini! Berlioz and Cellini triumph at the Palace of Versailles, dedicated “To all the glories of France”!

Some of Boulez's finest Berlioz performances are gathered together in this very welcome compendium. Symphonie fantastique is given a terrifyingly formidable performance.

Pierre Boulez first mounted the concert podium in the late 1950s in order to do justice do his own challenging works, but before long he had garnered the reputation of a peerless interpreter of 20th-century music tout court. Then in 1967 the modernist Boulez took the musical by surprise by turning to that arch-Romantic Hector Berlioz, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in the Symphonie fantastique and Lélio, the little-known work he intended as its sequel. The result was every bit as stimulating as one might have expected from this great musical provocateur. “For Boulez,” opined Gramophone’s original reviewer, “the [Fantastique] is a sinister mental experience, not merely the drug-crazed torment of the program but something colder and still more frightening.” More recently, a New York Times critic wrote: “This is a performance true to the composer’s Gothic imagination in its sumptuousness and menace but also icily precise in negotiating tricky rhythmic maneuvers, and oddly modern … Besides having a ferocity all its own, [it] comes in a whole treasure box of other incisive Berlioz recordings by Mr. Boulez in his early maturity. Yvonne Minton is splendid in La Mort de Cléopâtre, flinging out regal defiance, and Jean-Louis Barrault is the perfect restless narrator for the work Berlioz wrote to continue the dream of the Fantastique, the concert autobiography Lélio.” The new 4-album reissue also includes Yvonne Minton’s “dramatically incisive … passionate response [to Les Nuits d’été] showing her at her most movingly eloquent and [Stuart] Burrows also at his finest … Strongly recommended … highly stimulating” (Penguin Guide).

REVIEW:

Some of Boulez's finest Berlioz performances are gathered together in this very welcome compendium. Not the least of the pleasures is the association of the Symphonic Fantastique with its pendant Lelio: they are not a required coupling, of course, but there is a special pleasure in hearing the unforgettable tones of Jean-Louis Barrault (he who once memorably played Berlioz on film) as he revives after the drug-induced nightmare. Barrault speaks so beautifully that the ramshackle concoction of some very mixed inspirations becomes a rich Berliozian experience. The symphony is given a formidable performance, terrifyingly formidable in the measured tread of the "March to the Scaffold", somewhat too much so where the waltz should charm, even if ironically, and making a morose landscape of the "Scene aux champs". But it is a sustained and valid performance which does not seek to make the work into a vehicle for personal virtuosity (as in different ways so many conductors have done), and conjures up Berlioz's dark romantic vision.

As can be seen, the Nuits d'ete songs are shared. Berlioz first wrote them for mezzo-soprano or tenor and piano, then rewriting them to some extent and transposing the first three for the orchestral vision, probably because he then had particular singers in mind or each song. Boulez keeps to the orchestral version of the key sequence (which not all do) and divides them equally between male and female voices. So Stuart Burrows sings a fresh. lively "Villanelle", and this is followed by Yvonne Minton's richly phrased "Spectre de la rose" and "Sur les lagunes" (in which she takes, successfully, the option of a low F). Burrows returns for "Absence", which he sings admirably, though without stifling regrets that this of all songs might have suited Minton and the mezzo-soprano timbre (many will remember Janet Baker here). He also sings "Au cimetiere", leaving Minton to finish the cycle off with her warm performance of "L'ile inconnue". There can be no question or an authentic version when Berlioz left so many options open; this is a compromise, and even if one may have other preferences, it works well. Yvonne Minton goes on to show not only a fine voice but fine musicianship as she sustains Boulez in holding La mort de Cleopatre together so well. Berliozians will recognize one or two familiar ideas in this remarkable piece. notably one that was to serve again in Benvenuto Cellini, whose overture is given a sharp, vigorous performance here.

-- Gramophone [3/1995]

Classical Music

Drawing on the adventures of Byron’s Childe Harold and the composer’s own Italian experiences as a Prix de Rome winner, Harold en Italie was intended for the great violinist Paganini who, having initially rejected the work, later repented, giving it his highest praise. + The brilliant concert overtures Benvenuto Cellini and Le carnaval romain are among Berlioz’s most popular works. + Quickly taken up by several celebrated violinists of the time, the elegant Rêverie et Caprice is his only work for solo violin and orchestra. + Leonard Slatkin’s Lyon recording of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (8.572886) has been acclaimed as “quite simply one of the best on disc” by MusicWeb International.

BERLIOZ Requiem • Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond; Nicolai Gedda (ten); Cologne RO & Ch • ICA 5075 (82:22) Live: Cologne 8/26/1956


Having been, for the most part (all but the “March to the Scaffold” and “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath”), been impressed by Dimitri Mitropoulos’s studio recording of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique with the New York Philharmonic, I was very curious to hear what the famed Greek conductor did with the Requiem. I hadn’t known that there was an alternative performance conducted by Mitropoulos from July 15, 1956, with tenor Leopold Simoneau and the Vienna Philharmonic, nor have I heard that performance (available on Orfeo d’Or 457971), but in listening to this Cologne performance from August all I could think was how absolutely wonderful it is from start to finish.


Granted, the Cologne Radio Choir is no match for Roger Norrington’s exquisitely blended forces in his recording for Hänssler (which I dubbed a Classical Hall of Fame item in the last issue), but in the 1950s there were few choruses that good … Bayreuth, perhaps, and Wilhelm Pitz’s magnificent Philharmonia Chorus, but not many others. Within the scope of radio choirs of that era, the Cologne singers acquit themselves very well. But even more impressive is the sound of the orchestra, the incredible wealth of textural detail that Mitropoulos is able to draw from it, and more importantly, how well it is recorded. For a 1956 mono radio broadcast, the sound on this disc is phenomenal—easily on par with the absolute best high-fidelity products issued by RCA, EMI, and even Decca-London. Just to give you the most crucial example, there is actually some depth to the sound when the four brass choirs enter in the Dies irae , in fact, more depth to the sound than Seiji Ozawa’s digital recording with the Boston Symphony on RCA-BMG.


But even better than the sound is the musical treatment of the score. As much as I like Norrington’s leisurely pacing, which matches so well the depth of sound he is able to elicit from his orchestra, Mitropoulos gives us what I would characterize as the true Berlioz style. This performance is only five minutes shorter than Norrington’s, but it sounds much faster because Mitropoulos never lets the momentum sag. He is continually nudging the beat forward, even in the quietest and slowest passages in the score, with the result that the listener hears much more of the work’s structure without sacrificing quality of emotion or depth of feeling. It’s like listening to Charles Munch’s Symphonie fantastique, Colin Davis’s early recording of Romeo et Juliette, and either the Toscanini or Fischer-Dieskau recordings of Harold in Italy. It’s that good, and it’s in the same style. It’s also astonishing how much hall ambience, and more importantly depth of sound, is captured here considering that this was recorded not in a church or concert hall, but in Studio 1 of the Cologne radio station. Taking all of that into consideration, the sonic results almost beggar belief.


It would take far more room that I have to describe all the stunning moments in this performance, but allow me to pinpoint one: the way Mitropoulos pulls back on the syncopated wind and string figures at the beginning of the Lacrimosa . This has a tautness, and almost a swagger, in the rhythm that I’ve not heard achieved by any other conductor in this work. Another interesting aspect of this performance is to compare its timings to the other Mitropoulos version as well as Norrington. As previously mentioned, this Cologne performance runs only five minutes shorter than the Norrington, but the Vienna version runs three minutes faster than this. Without having heard it, then, I would have to say that I think I’d prefer this recording anyway. I really don’t like my Berlioz Requiem rushed that much, which is another reason I don’t care for the Ozawa recording.


There is but one movement where more space is required, and that is the Sanctus. It is gorgeously sung by Nicolai Gedda in his best early voice—in stereo recordings, only Stuart Burrows is as good and only Leopold Simoneau and Toby Spence come close—but the tenor is up front and center in the soundspace, not recessed in the back as he is supposed to be. It’s a small flaw but a telling one.


Could this, then, be a first-choice Requiem? Yes, but only if you don’t mind monophonic sound and the up-front recording of the tenor soloist. If you do, Norrington is clearly your best choice, and as I said last issue, there are few better than his performance, but this is one of those few. Another small miracle is the fact that ICA has managed to cram 82 and a half minutes of music on one CD.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

BERLIOZ: Requiem, Op. 5

Directed by Andy Sommer. Starring Orchestre de Paris, Berlioz, Christoph Eschenbach.