Keeping Score: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique

Keeping Score: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique Blu-ray delivers stunning video and reference-quality audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
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Keeping Score: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique Blu-ray Review

Berlioz' most famous composition gets the typically excellent 'Keeping Score' treatment in this exemplary offering.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 5, 2010

Few composers are as saddled with fame based on one singular piece as is Hector Berlioz and his Romantic treatise, Symphonie Fantastique. While the French virtuoso had a long and overall successful composing, conducting and writing career, he's probably going to be mostly remembered for this gargantuan orchestral work which redefined "program" music for the succeeding century plus, as well as providing "theme music," as it were, for cadres of struggling artists worldwide. Berlioz' obsessive compulsive tendencies triggered several interesting, if not outright unusual, episodes throughout his life, but they are nowhere more distilled than in Symphonie Fantastique, a sprawling, semi-autobiographical peek inside a tortured mind, and, believe it or not, a somewhat pathetic attempt to attract the attentions of Harriet Smithson, an actress with whom Berlioz had become infatuated.

Maestro Tilson Thomas

As is typical with these always excellent Keeping Score offerings, conductor and explicator Michael Tilson Thomas takes us on both a biographical and musical history lesson, starting of all places with Foucalt's pendulum. One might half expect Tilson Thomas to undertake an analysis of Umberto Eco's equally gargantuan novel built around the swinging piece of jewelry, but instead Tilson Thomas likens Foucalt's attempts to underpin the earth's movements with his visual analogue to Berlioz' similar attempts to mine the spinning emotional worlds of the creative spirit and paint them in musical colors. As Tilson Thomas avers, if Descartes famously posited "I think, therefore I am," Berlioz came along to proclaim, "I feel, therefore I am." It became the overarching slogan of the Romantic movement, and Symphonie Fantastique became its orchestral standard bearer.

It's rather interesting in this regard to approach the symbol of the pendulum from a musicological and historical perspective. If the decades leading up to Berlioz' ascent were marked by a nascent rationalism and focus on intellectual "purity" and clarity of structure, the Romantics were all about that messy interior world, a world both literally and figuratively of blood and guts, overwhelming emotion and often disorganized temperamental content. It's equally fascinating to see the evolution of the Romantic idiom grow from Berlioz' actually relatively restrained formalism to the expansive works of the late 19th century masters like Wagner and Mahler. In fact when supposed rationalism once again came to the fore, in the hyper-intellectual dodecaphonic system, it's ironic, to say the least, to hear that the results of this incredibly structured and completely formalized approach toward composition actually often sound like the ultra-Romantic musical ravings of a madman.

Tilson Thomas spends quite a bit of time exploring Berlioz' personal failings, all of which helped to color his orchestral writing as well as its emotional subtext. To our modern day ears, Symphonie Fantastique may not seem overtly revolutionary, and yet to audiences accustomed to the relatively tamer worlds of Mozart and Beethoven (a composer whom Berlioz idolized), this five movement behemoth probably seemed like, well, the musical ravings of a madman. What's apparent almost two centuries on from Symphonie Fantastique's 1830 premiere (the same year Berlioz won the Prix du Paris after four years of unsuccessful trying) is that Berlioz actually mined the world of classical restraint, crafting carefully structured melodies that, as in the case of the second movement, are actually quite redolent of both Mozart and Beethoven, while at the same time not being shy about suddenly erupting into hugely emotional compositional tangents which the more tamped down Viennese school of the late 18th and early 19th centuries would have never dared to explore. Berlioz did not find anything approaching universal acclaim when Symphonie Fantastique was first performed in Paris. His dreams of instant, French Idol-esque success quickly vanished under a withering array of critical brickbats, although truth be told several prescient listeners did understand that this was a composer to be reckoned with. The ironic thing about Berlioz' musical career is how highly esteemed he was as a conductor even when his music wasn't initially appreciated, something that brings to mind Mahler's travails several decades later.

This is one of the more wonderfully visual outings in the Keeping Score series, one which relies less on the graphic sensibilities of the Shostakovich entry, and more in line with the environmental splendor of the Ives episode. This time instead of the lovely fall colors of Ives' New England we're treated to some wonderful views of Paris as well as some Alpine fields which Berlioz sought to paint musically in the third movement of Symphony Fantastique. We also get a beautiful assortment of sylvan Italian glades (including in and around the lovely little town of Subiaco), the sort of bucolic views that no doubt deeply influenced Berlioz during his travels there, time he spent drastically revising the original Symphonie Fantastique.

There's little doubt that for most listeners, whether or not they're musically educated, all music tends to paint certain mental images as the notes waft by. In that regard, virtually all music can be termed, at least partially, as program music, music with a "text," as it were which guides the musical content, rather than vice versa. If Berlioz was one of the first to make this approach absolutely conscious and manifest, he was also one of the more skilled practitioners in crafting music which ably depicted his textual theses. Tilson Thomas does an equally admirable job in mining both the personal, emotional background of the composer as well as the meaning of the music which resulted from Berlioz' inner turmoil. Keeping Score continues to provide incredible history lessons as well as compelling musical performances, and Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony are to be commended for this enterprising series.

Keeping Score: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

As noted above, this is one of the strongest looking Keeping Score entries in the series' initial rash of Blu-ray releases. While the concert footage is suitably sharp, with good detail and excellent contrast, it's really in the location footage that this particular episode soars. With some beautiful shots of various European locales, largely Paris and Italy, this Keeping Score presents an at times awesomely saturated palette, with really phenomenal detail that rarely if ever betrays its interlaced authoring. I was very happy to notice a complete lack of artifacting on such sometimes problematic issues like waving fields of grass or heavy foliage. The level of detail is quite astounding at times, where, for example, the interior of a Paris library where Berlioz huddled to compete for the Prix du Paris reveals grit and grime on window sills and an almost palpable frost on the windows themselves. Fleshtones are admirably lifelike and the level of detail on the instruments is equally excellent.

Keeping Score: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony offer us three sterling soundmixes, all lossless. Dolby True HD offerings are available in 7.1, 5.1 and 2.0 and they are all marvelous. I opted for the 7.1, though I toggled occasionally to the 5.1 and 2.0. I won't spend a lot of time on the 2.0, other than to say it's remarkably clear and well balanced for a stereo folddown. I've received some private messages from newcomers to high end home theater systems, lamenting the fact that they don't yet have surround sound equipment, and in this case I can firmly state listeners will not be disappointed by the 2.0 offering. That said, if you have the option, definitely go with either the 5.1 or 7.1 mixes offered here. These are incredibly robust recordings, with a sometimes overwhelmingly surprising amount of low end, and with a really brilliantly present brass sound massed in the front channels. Surround channels augment the ambient hall feeling, making the listener feel like he's front and center in Davies Hall, enjoying a private concert by Tilson Thomas and his troupe. Fidelity is pretty much perfect throughout this performance, and is certainly just fine in the documentary segment. The performance itself is quite good, with Tilson Thomas doing a perhaps surprisingly vehement job of translating Berlioz' shifting emotional moods.

Keeping Score: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

My only slight qualm with these Keeping Score releases is the fact that they all contain the same bare bones extras, a generic making of featurette, as well as text entries on Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. Trailers are also included.

Keeping Score: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

I have only two requests of Maestro Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony:

1. Please release the first iteration of Keeping Score on Blu-ray (they're currently only available on SD-DVD).

2. Please continue releasing these wonderful offerings.

Keeping Score is a treasure for music lovers of all ages and has rapidly become my favorite music-centric series.