How can you keep
Marc Minkowski down in the eighteenth century once he's conducted the nineteenth century? After he accompanied
Anne-Sofie von Otter in the delightful debaucheries of Offenbach, how long could he resist the siren call of Hector Berlioz, the most flamboyantly Romantic French composer of the nineteenth century? And once he decided to go for Berlioz, where else is there to start but with the deliriously depraved and insanely incoherent Symphonie fantastique?
And go for it
Minkowski does, taking the players of both the
Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Les Musiciens du Louvre with him. Let loose on the extravagantly colored music of Berlioz, the
Mahler Orchestra and Musiciens perform with brilliance, precision, and passion. And cast loose on Berlioz's hallucinogenic score,
Minkowski wrestles the music's strange structures and weird sonorities, singing the ardent lyricism of the first three movements and then casting caution to the winds for the nightmare visions of the closing two movements, riding their cresting waves of lunatic luminosity to a final plunge into the abyss. And
Minkowski goes beyond the fantastique, closing the disc with Herminie, Berlioz's earlier and slightly too sensational Scene lyrique sung with reserved sensuality by Aurélia Legay and accompanied with chaste fervor by the
Mahler Orchestra and Les Musiciens. Deutsche Grammophon's sound is clean and thrilling but a little empty.