Pierre Boulez’s Roméo et Juliette is brilliantly played by the Cleveland Orchestra and conducted with a transparency that allows details to emerge clearly, even in the most eventful parts. However, despite a strong overall impact, there’s an emotional distancing from the music that’s apparent from the very opening, the orchestral combat between the Montagus and the Capulets. With Munch or Mitropoulos, we’re launched into a ferocious tumult and the brass’ intervention is powerful enough to stop World War III. With Boulez, it’s simply an Allegro fugato–albeit a very brilliant one, precisely articulated, sounding slower than it actually is because of that precision, and with details such as the quietly plucked strings under the brass clearly audible. Similar points may be made elsewhere, as in the Love Scene, where the playing and conducting can’t be faulted but the note-to-note intensity that infuses the narrative with its emotional energy burns at a lower level. Of course, many listeners prefer their Berlioz somewhat tamed by a more objective interpretive approach, and if you share that view, you’ll love this performance.
Whatever your preference, there’s still much to admire here. Boulez’s lighter-than-air Queen Mab Scherzo, one of the fastest on disc, is so precisely executed and effortless-sounding that you’re left in awe of conductor and orchestra. The chorus is superb, singing with clarity and color. Soprano Melanie Diener displays a rich mezzo-like timbre in a part that’s almost always taken by a mezzo or contralto. Kenneth Tarver’s Queen Mab song is among the best on disc, pointedly phrased and sung in a beautiful lyric tenor. Bass Denis Sedov’s Friar Laurence lets the side down though, the interpretation generalized, the voice wooly. The engineering is first-rate.
The substantial filler, Les Nuits d’été, comes as a letdown after such a commendable Roméo et Juliette. Though recorded in the same month, the sonics are less vibrant, sibilants spray from the speakers, vocal overtones form buzzing halos that come and go around Sedov’s bass, and the orchestra seems set farther back. The cycle usually is done by a soprano or a mezzo. Here, the songs are distributed among three singers. Berlioz often used multiple singers but there’s no indication in the booklet notes explaining why this particular trio of voice-types was chosen. Colin Davis’ 1960s recording of Les Nuits used four singers and distributed the songs differently. So despite its curiosity value I derived little pleasure other than from two songs, “Absence” and “Au cimetière”, expertly sung by Tarver, whose clear diction and tonal beauty are a joy. Diener’s two songs are done fairly well, but that’s not good enough for a cycle that’s had so many exceptional recordings. Sedov is given the two longest songs, “Le Spectre de la rose” and “Sur les lagunes”, amounting to about half the cycle’s length, but they’re back-to-back so his lumbering bass has a soporific effect. The numerical rating distills a 9/10 Roméo with a 6/7 Les Nuits.
