Robin Ticciati & SRSO - Berlioz: Romeo et Juliette - The Sunday Times

We owe this proliferation of Romeo and Juliets to Shakespeare 400, rather than an anniversary of the French composer, but it is welcome - Roméo et Juliette, looking forward as it does to the epic scale, and huge forces of Mahler's symphonies, is a relative rarity on the concert platform. These British conductors, dedicated Berliozians both, launch into the "Combats" and "Tumulte" of the introduction with a vengeance, getting virtuosic and intense string-playing. I marginally prefer the sound of the BBC horns at the Intervention du Prince. Both unfold the orchestral love sequence in rapt long phrases (timings for the entire work are close, Davis coming in at just over 92 minutes, Ticciati at 94) and dash off the Queen Mab scherzo with Mendelssohnian fairy transparency and wit. Davis's soloists, Michèle Losier, Samuel Boden and David Soar, are more characterful than Ticciati's and Chandos gives bonuses in the form of the Royal Hunt and Storm, from Les Troyens, and Berlioz's concert arrangement of the Trojan March.