Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique [Bychkov-Orchestre De Paris] This is the very first time that Berlioz has appeared in my Blog, long overdue, i haven't played this work for quite a while, so it was good to revisit this again today.
Semyon Bychkov was born in Russia, and is now an American citizen, he is 58 years old, he made this recording in 1993, the booklet front cover shows Bychkov in a casual pose with jeans and sweatshirt [photo by Holger Scheibe], with a grainy grey background, with the lettering in blue and yellow, almost written in marker pen style, i like the finished visual product.
A recording / interpretation that is neither at either extreme, yet enjoyable in its own right, the Marche Au Supplice' [March to the Scaffold] was brilliant, it's the shortest piece of Symphonie Fantastique, at 4:37 on this recording, but is packed full of goodies, a lovely military feel to it, with drums and brass, and that off stage vague instrumentation stuff too!, i like the growling bassoons at the beginning [0:08-0:24], the forte explosions are nicely caught in this recording [0:26 & 1:02], brass and drums really do hit you, the chattering bassoons [1:16-1:33], but it's when the brass churn out their main theme [1:34+] that it takes to flight, with the 'raspberry' brass really adding to the background rhythm [2:16+], right at the end the plaintive clarinet squealing away [4:01-4:11], represents his last anguished cry as the guillotine blade comes down, a nice 'little' Berlioz touch!, for me on this listen the most exciting bit of this work.
Here's Semyon Bychkov conducting the fourth movement 'March to the Scaffold' on YouTube.
