If just one work had to stand for the whole of Berlioz's achievement, epitomise its obsessions and its subversive strangeness, then the dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette would be as good as any. It is a score with no obvious precursors, and its detailed programme, which blurs the distinction between orchestral symphony, oratorio and even, in the last movement, opera, was unprecedented when it was composed in 1839.
This is really a Romeo symphony, Shakespeare's tragedy seen almost exclusively through the eyes of the male protagonist and as Berlioz related that experience to his own emotional turmoil. But the essence of the original is so faithfully distilled into the seven movements (from the depiction of the enmity between the Montagues and the Capulets in the introduction to their reconciliation in the choral affirmation of the final pages) that the drama is compulsive and convincing.
And no other conductor reveals that thrilling, raw-edged sense of theatre better than Colin Davis. The first tranche of concerts in the London Symphony Orchestra's bicentenary Berlioz tribute ended with this, conducted with all the fervour and passion that Davis uniquely brings to this composer, identifying every twist and turn in the huge score. The playing was consistently outstanding: to hear the LSO again after listening to London's other top-flight orchestras was to be reminded of the comfortable gap in class between it and the rest. Every strand of the opening turmoil was distinct, every extraordinary colour in the Queen Mab scherzo perfectly polished; the love-scene slow movement was buoyed on seductively warm string tone.
The singing was not always on quite the same level. Once or twice the chorus seemed a little ragged and the soloists were variable. The contralto Sara Mingardo was superb in the prologue, but the tenor Stuart Neill did not make much of his description of Queen Mab and her retinue, and although bass Alastair Miles delivered Friar Laurence's homily with real authority and presence, his words were too often indistinct. Small blemishes, though, on what was a genuine celebration of an extraordinary work.
