A decade after his Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz's obsessions with the actress Harriet Smithson and with the work of Shakespeare converged in the dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette. The composer conceived it with a final grand choral movement in the manner of Beethoven's Ninth. But, in this concert, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra featured only the three purely orchestral movements that make up the central part of the work - together longer than most conventional symphonies.
Perhaps prompted by the knowledge that Berlioz had not been above rearranging Shakespeare, conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier was a law unto himself here. From the podium he smilingly announced a change in the order of movements, but offered no explanation. Thus, proceedings opened with the Love Scene followed by the Queen Mab Scherzo, so that the movement normally played as the opening sequence, depicting Roméo alone, became the finale.
Tortelier, who had fairly danced and jetéed his way through the ball episode, certainly brought fireworks to the party. But while it is arguable that the brio of the festivities makes for a more climactic ending in purely abstract symphonic terms, to subvert the dramatic scheme is surely also to unravel the programmatic thread whose expressive truth Berlioz sought to convey. The means Berlioz used - the instrumental colour and the highly charged atmospheric effects, tellingly re-created by the CBSO - were to have far-reaching influence, and it may be that Tortelier saw highlighting these as his priority. Even so, his logic here was questionable.
Given that this is Berlioz's bicentennial year, the real challenge for the massive forces of the CBS chorus would have been to perform the very last movement of Roméo et Juliette. Instead, it was Fauré's Requiem that formed the second half of this French programme. But Symphony Hall, more theatre than cathedral, is a hard place in which to achieve the subtle balance between intimacy and spiritual grandeur that Fauré demands. Despite some seraphic moments from the soprano section, and the sterling efforts of baritone James Rutherford and treble Jack Halsey, this was a slightly drab affair.
