GREAT RECORDINGS phase 10

BERLIOZ: SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE*
Overture: 'Le Corsaire'
Royal Hunt and Storm & Trojan March
('Les Troyens')
Orchestre National
de la Radiodiffusion Française*
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Thomas Beecham

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'There is something irremovably French about Berlioz's score that demands a French orchestra, and the one that plays here for Beecham is France's finest. If you want a genuinely French Symphonie fantastique, wonderfully performed and superbly recorded, go out and get this release before it's snapped up by your neighbour.' (Gramophone)

Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) had a lifelong affinity with French music in general and the music of Hector Berlioz in particular. From the earliest stages of his career as a conductor, Beecham was keen to perform the composer's large-scale works, as well as the sparkling overtures. He gave his first performance of the Symphonie fantastique in 1915.

Sub-titled 'Episode in the Life of an Artist', this remarkable programme-symphony was inspired by Berlioz's love for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, whom he later married. Surprisingly, Beecham conducted the work with a French orchestra only when he embarked on his extremely fruitful relationship with the French National Radio Orchestra in Paris in 1957, by which time he was in his late 70s.

They recorded the Symphonie fantastique twice: first in mono in 1957-8, and then, in 1959, in this even more vivid stereo. The couplings, played by Beecham's own Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, are favourite shorter pieces by Berlioz: the Overture Le Corsaire (in a performance described in Gramophone as an 'outstanding winner') and the two famous orchestral extracts from the opera Les Troyens.