LP Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique (180g)

New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Dimitri Mitropoulos
Label: Columbia, 1957 - Serie: Speakers Corner Records

Beethoven's symphony was only just completed in 1830, when a young Frenchman caused a sensation with a completely new kind of emphatic orchestral music. Based on the form of antiquity, Berlioz creates his "mighty instrumental composition" as a five-movement musical drama and lands the stroke of genius of French Romanticism, which ignites at the ego and its states of excitement.
Berlioz precedes the musical design of the autobiographically motivated figure of a young artist who dreams, fantasizes and feverishes himself through the episodes with a powerful orchestral apparatus with multiple timpani, four bassoons and military brass. His irrepressible will to express the visions radically and unmistakably musically is already evident in this - starting with the recurring delusional 'Idée fixe', the horrible opium intoxication and ending with the nightmare of his own funeral.

Of the many high-quality recordings, some of which are also loving effects, Dimitri Mitropoulos puts this one in the reference class. The great baton leader lets the rhythms pulsate, mixes the fullness of the timbres with a skilled hand and gradates the orchestral means so finely that unheard details reveal themselves with every further listening act

This Speakers Corner production was made using analog master tape and 100% pure analog mastering. All licenses and GEMA contributions were paid.

Reviews
"The New York Philharmonic plays with force and finesse. Remastering and pressing are great." (Audio, June 2017)