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Original Message
Near Miss..... [yt]
Posted by Todd Krieger on April 27, 2015 at 02:57:05:
There was a video production loaded on YouTube, Charles Dutoit conducting the NHK Symphony in Berlioz' Symphony Fantastique..... Performed in Salzburg in 2013..... I think this was from a European broadcast. The credits listing at the end were in English.
This was very close to the best "Fantastique" I've heard..... "A Ball", "Scene in the Fields", and "Witches Sabbath" were borderline definitive... "Reveries" was excellent, just missing the magic of the Solti/Chicago studio performance on RCA. The only reason why I'd give Solti/Chicago the edge overall was the "March to the Scaffold" was somewhat rushed, a common failing. The "somber" and "horrific" character was lost (Solti was definitive here). But the performance otherwise had all the horsepower and drama of the great Solti performance. The NHK was superlative, even with the few "B" players in the wind section.
The sound in the uploaded video was *badly* saturated. The loud passages were very distorted. (The video's "aspect ratio" seems to vary with browser as well.) But if you like this oft-performed Berlioz work, and just take in the performance and bear the recorded sound, it's close to as good as it gets.
An encore of "Farandole" from Bizet's L'Arlesienne Suite #2 was then performed.... After the encore, during the final applause, Simon Rattle was in the Salzburg audience, spotted on camera.