Robin Ticciati & SRSO - Berlioz: Romeo et Juliette - Gramophone

If Davis and the BBC Symphony lack a varnish of immediacy, Robin Ticciati and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (them again!) have it in their very core. Barely quicker by the stopwatch than Davis and slower than Gergiev, Ticciati from the first, explosive bars finds tauter drama than either. Recording live from Stockholm concerts in 2014, Linn's close microphones draw out detailing within the orchestra, and even the individual voices of the Swedish Radio Choir. The sound is familiar from Harding's Symphonie, slightly thin yet always alert and clear: almost pictorial in ‘Roméo seul'; exhilarating in the Mendelssohnian delicacy of the Queen Mab scherzo; threatening to career out of control at the Capulets' ball, with such a sense of danger that the heart races long into the love scene, as surely the young lovers' would. With more than acceptable soloists in Katija Dragojevic, Andrew Staples and Alastair Miles, those seeking a vivid, headier companion to Colin Davis would do well to try this.