Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is not only one of the truly iconic works of the Romantic period, it’s also one of the repertoire’s most challenging test pieces for both conductor and orchestra, offering a huge range of interpretive options and requiring virtuoso brilliance, panache, subtlety, and masterful pacing. The music certainly doesn’t play itself. In their latest outing, Simon Rattle and his Berlin forces fail miserably, and in some surprisingly basic ways. Nowhere has the orchestra’s deterioration under Rattle sounded more obvious, especially in terms of its corporate sonority and ensemble values. The current “Berlin sound” evidently features an absurdly overbearing string timbre and an inability to balance a tutti at forte dynamics and above–a defect that is positively lethal in so much music, and in this of all works.
Consider the March to the Scaffold: this has got to be the most flat-footed version on disc, the brass dull and muted at a trudging tempo, the climax at the end resolutely under-characterized (and we get the repeat, alas). Just listen to Rattle cut back the fortissimo chugging strings at figure 56–ridiculous! This proves to be a hallmark of the performance generally. But then, let’s start at the beginning.
The opening, with its excessively legato woodwinds, isn’t so much wistful as it is merely listless. Bits of the allegro go well enough, but once again the climax misfires: the trumpets don’t shine, the timpani don’t pound, and the theoretically triple-piano coda is, in this context, too loud. The Ball, after an opening lacking the necessary “tug” from the cellos and basses (nice harps, though), features overly careful articulation from the violins, who drown out the remarkably flavorless woodwinds when they enter with the idée fixe. Berlioz’s carefully marked portamentos tend to be ignored, and the coda starts at a frenetic scramble that seems to get heavier as it progresses.
The Scene in the Country opens with insufficient distancing effects between the English horn and oboe. At 16 minutes Rattle’s tempo isn’t unusually slow, but the expressively neutral woodwind playing makes the movement sound longer than it is. The timpanists at the end are terribly inconsistent in their obedience to Berlioz’s very detailed dynamic markings, with singularly unatmospheric results. The March already has been mentioned, but the finale is equally bad. Rattle certainly gets the E-flat clarinet to shriek out the idée fixe–so much so that some of the notes appear to be coming out wrong. In the context of this overly smooth, uninflected interpretation it certainly sounds bizarre, but not in a good way.
The Dies Irae episode features tinny bells and, once again, wimpy brass, while at the Ronde du Sabbat, which Berlioz marks “a little held back” so as to emphasize its contrapuntal grotesqueness, Rattle speeds up with predictably unconvincing results. Compare this to Karajan in ’75–the same orchestra, but with wonderfully spooky bells and just as much sumptuousness in the strings (indeed, more). Karajan also ensures that the brass and winds deliver the goods thanks to a typically wide, uninhibited dynamic range and a far more emphatic handling of rhythm.
In short, you might say that Rattle’s performance is like the proverbial fan: it sucks and blows at the same time. Unsurprisingly, it gets roundly praised in a typically incompetent review by one Charlotte Gardner, published on the BBC website. It’s worth citing for several reasons. First, this release was announced several months ago and yet it still hasn’t shown up domestically. Nevertheless, reviews were appearing in England as early as September (tired of waiting for a review copy, I went out and purchased the disc from Amazon UK). If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would be wondering if EMI had decided to hold back the disc’s U.S. release, perhaps in the knowledge that it would first accumulate at least a few dependable accolades in the British press. It wouldn’t be the first time. See if it shows up here (if it ever does) with a sticker quoting a positive review. In the event, this BBC abomination catalogues all of the very worst habits of British criticism (and no, I’m not trying to be “anti-Brit”–American record criticism often stinks too, just in a different way, and British critical reaction to this release overall has been refreshingly mixed, a telling sign of just how lousy it truly must be).
First, Gardner refers to the Berlin Philharmonic as “the Rolls Royce of orchestras” (not Mercedes, note), and if by this she means “an over-hyped symbol of conspicuous consumption living on its reputation”, then I suppose she might have a point. Her object, though, is to defend Simon Rattle from “a small band of German critics” who contend that Rattle’s tenure has seen the ensemble in decline. Well Ms. Gardner, it’s not just the Germans who feel that way, and her comment is particularly pigheaded when you consider that no country has been more welcoming of British podium talent than has Germany (think Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Daniel Harding, Roger Norrington, etc).
Next, Gardner sets up a straw-man, asking if this modern ensemble can possibly compete with the “glorious technicolor” period sound of (you guessed it) Roger Norrington’s ghastly approximation on EMI. So now we know that Gardner evidently is oblivious to the fact that this very same orchestra, under Karajan, turned in one of the finest versions of the work currently available, never mind the efforts of conductors famous for their Berlioz, such as Munch, Davis, or Markevitch (even Norrington recorded an excellent Fantastique, but for Hänssler in Stuttgart, not EMI).
Gardner cites Rattle’s disgusting March to the Scaffold as an example of the orchestra’s ability to “milk” the music’s “operatic qualities” to their “full potential” (whatever that means–and of course it’s why we listen to the March to the Scaffold in the first place, right?). And while she concedes that the Berliners fail to “make a raucous sound” in the finale (actually, they don’t), she concludes that this fact is “disappointing, but not catastrophic as to the CD’s overall likeability.” Evidently, “likeability” is a quality independent of such trivial details as an insightful, idiomatic, exciting performance of the work at hand. Indeed, you can’t help feeling in reading Gardner’s review–and her own words suggest–that the “likeability” issue was settled before she even listened to the disc.
There is, however, one thing that Gardner and I do agree on: Susan Graham’s singing in The Death of Cleopatra is excellent, and as an accompanist Rattle can’t be faulted. But unless you must have Graham in this particular work (she’s done plenty of fine Berlioz elsewhere), there is absolutely no reason to put up with 55 minutes of interpretive and technical mediocrity in the symphony. The overall poor impression extends to the engineering, with the strings too far forward and the brass way off in the distance. Ultimately though, responsibility for this whole atrocious affair rests with Rattle. It is inexcusable that any critic should rise to his defense when comparisons in the Symphonie fantastique with the same orchestra are ready to hand (including Levine, Kempe, and Barenboim besides Karajan) and reveal so tellingly the audible facts. This is just dreadful; don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise.
