Berlioz - La Damnation de Faust / Veasey, Gedda, Bastin, van Allan, LSO, C. Davis

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Music reviews of Berlioz - La Damnation de Faust / Veasey, Gedda, Bastin, van Allan, LSO, C. Davis

Music Review: GOETHE DID NOT COMMENT
Rating: 5 Stars

Davis seems a complete natural for this extremely French music, much as Previn seems to be for English music. He understands his man through and through and finds no contradiction between the grandiose effect-maker and the lyricist who can take his place with Schubert, Weber and Brahms. For me, the crucial qualification in an interpreter of Berlioz is that he must know how to relax. This music, like Ravel's, will gather not just power but immense power through its own idiom and in the composer's good time, and it must not be forced in any way. Davis gets the Rakoszy march to perfection, and if that can actually be said for most conductors these days, I suspect it is in no small measure down to Davis that the standard has been set. Where vividness is called for, as in some of the more pantomimish turns by Mephistopheles, Davis gets his orchestra to respond admirably. If the result slightly suggests the version of the Devil ridiculed by C S Lewis's Screwtape as something in red tights, I suspect that was Berlioz's vision anyway.

Faust himself is far and away the most important vocal part. Faust here is sung by no less than Gedda, and his rendering has probably been the touchstone ever since. He is something like perfect, although I confess I was not listening, nor inclined to listen, for minutiae of his French pronunciation. In sound alone Mephistopheles is largely a singer of beautiful lyric music with a number of outbursts when the composer remembers to be diabolic, and while I can't associate Jules Bastin with this view, if that's what it happened to be he carries it off admirably. I have a particular liking for the steady, unexaggerated and affecting Marguerite of Josephine Veasey, and it only remains to trot out routine but sincere and appreciative compliments to everyone else concerned.

Since writing the above I have had the chance to see as well as hear Berlioz's Damnation of Faust on DVD. He was a rum one, was Berlioz. It was only to be expected that he would be taken with the Faust legend, considering the impact Goethe's Faust had on the entire romantic movement. Duly captivated, he treats us to what is in large part one of his highest achievements in `absolute' music, with its wonderful instrumental episodes and its numerous songs. Whether it really comes near to Goethe's great enquiry into what perdition, salvation, indeed the soul itself, may consist of I have never been too sure. It may be that there is a dimension missing from even the finest sound-only rendering, which is very likely this one, and that the work is crying out for staging. One way or the other, neglect it at the peril of your musical soul.

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