Berlioz Odyssey

Colin Davis

LSO Live LSO0827; 10 CDS

+ 6 hybrid SACDS

Davis was seemingly Berlioz’s chief disciple on earth, and this was the glorious late flowering of his love for the composer in live recordings with the LSO made between 2000 and 2013. Les Troyens crackles with a theatricality that outshines even the pioneering recording Davis made 30 years earlier, and The Damnation of Faust is similarly thrilling. Romeo and Juliet has gentle sensuousness that’s utterly beguiling, and the warmth and virtuosity of that other great Shakespearean drama Beatrice and Benedict is utterly persuasive. It’s the greatest compliment to producer James Mallinson (who died in 2018) that you rarely feel the limitations of the Barbican acoustic, and it’s wonderful to have Davis’s final performance of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in surround, so that we can revel in the ear-shattering climaxes and the way the most lyrical moments evaporate in the immense acoustic of St Paul’s Cathedral. Berlioz authority David Cairns’s notes for the music are sometimes as revelatory as the performances.