Search - Berlioz, Stokowski :: Symphonie Fantastique

You expect Leopold Stokowski to go crazy in music which really is about going crazy, and he certainly doesn't disappoint. The "party scene" in the second movement has an unrivaled sensuality of utterance--it sounds like he's got about 50 harps going instead of the two to four the composer recommends. And then there's the by-now customary gong crescendo at the very end of a suitably hellish witches' Sabbath. He even underpins the funeral bells with pianos, as Berlioz suggests--the only conductor ever to take that option. It's all great fun, and rendered in sound of positively shocking detail and immediacy. -- David Hurwitz