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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
5 67971 2
{Angel 5 67972 2}
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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.
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