Hector Berlioz
           Te Deum

* Roberto Alagna (tenor), Marie-Claire Alain (organ).
Total Time: 57:40
Virgin Classics 7243 5 45449 2 7

Summary for the Busy Executive: A kinder, gentler Wow.

Berlioz scored one of his major successes with the Te Deum.  Most writers
on the composer consider it the best of his "monumental" works.  Certainly,
it's the most conventional.  I find myself a bit out of step.  I like the
work quite a bit, but I prefer the wilder and woollier Berlioz of the
Requiem and the Grande Symphonie funebre et triomphale.  The Te Deum has
a curious history.  Berlioz composed the six choral movements.  Then,
deciding it wasn't quite grand enough, added an instrumental "Prelude"
and a "March before the Presentation of the Colors." Almost everyone omits
these later movements.  This recording, as far as I know the only one,
presents the Te Deum in its entirety.  I find the additions well worth
hearing, even illuminating.  They make you realize Berlioz's links to
the French music of his time - to the French Empire ceremonial
wind-and-percussion pieces of composers like Gossec.  In a sense, even in
these minor works, Berlioz takes the genre further than his predecessors
or contemporaries.

Berlioz's original conception called for a mere two choirs and
large orchestra.  However, an encounter with a performance of Bach's St.
Matthew Passion inspired him to add a third chorus, and his concern for
contrasting vocal and instrumental colors (as well as hearing a London
charity children's choir) prompted him to specify that the third chorus
consist of children.  From the first, Berlioz wants to impress you and
succeeds, not just with grandness but with academic counterpoint.  There's
always a clunky, home-made quality to Berlioz's academic counterpoint: a
whiff of homework clings to it.  It's almost as if he thinks too strongly
in terms of harmony and chorale, where everything marches in lockstep and
the "counterpoint" consists of filigree on the harmonic idea.  His mastery
shows in an expanded view of counterpoint: the idea of simultaneous
activity, rather than fugue and canon, such as one finds at the end of
the "Tu, Christe, Rex gloriae" movement.

I get my jollies mostly from the instrumental and choral colors, as well
as from the astonishing, unexpected chord progressions (even the relatively
mild one at "pleni sunt coeli") that pepper the work and the asymmetrical
melodic phrasing that sounds both odd and right at the same time.  I can
and do admire Beethoven enormously, but years of experience have robbed
his music of the power to surprise me.  I can't go back to the time when
Beethoven's Fifth counted as undiscovered country.  Berlioz's music still
gives me the little unexpected jolt.  It remains, at even the surface,
mysterious.  I recently took part in performances of the Missa Solemnis and
Romeo et Juliette.  The Beethoven was the more complex work musically, but
the Berlioz was harder for performers to grasp.  The parts simply didn't
move the way we expected, possibly because Beethoven has sunk deeper into
our musical culture than Berlioz has.

I like the "Judex crederis" movement best, from its blaring open fifths
at the start, to the swinging counterpoint of the choral opening, to its
harmonic ambiguity throughout.  It reminds me a little of the grand guignol
howling "Lachrymosa" in the Requiem.

This is probably the best performance of the work I've heard.  Abbado's
live DG recording had some great moments, particularly the quieter ones,
but the account as a whole strikes with less sheer force than Nelson's.
Abbado scores over Nelson in the tenor solo, "Te ergo quaesimus," both with
a better tenor (Francisco Araiza) and a more elegant and varied way with
a phrase.  Alagna does the standard contemporary version of Italian Tenor,
as if someone is squeezing him until his eyeballs bulge.  Subtlety ain't
his strong point, and he sounds, unfortunately, like many other operatic
tenors, with, unfortunately, the same level of musicianship.  On the other
hand, Araiza could probably do a credible job with melodie and Lieder.  Yet
Alagna has the career, for some reason.

Still, Nelson does everything else much better.  The choirs are clearer
with electrifying attacks and superbly clear diction.  Everything has
more glitz and oomph, exactly right for this Berlioz.  Nelson shakes the
Victorian cobwebs from the work and presents something far more audacious
than what they customarily hand us.  My one complaint (other than Alagna,
who does okay if you haven't heard anyone better) is with the placement of
the "March" after the "Judex crederis," which ends so gloriously, almost
anything else seems anti-climactic.  You can solve this, however, simply
by reprogramming your CD player.  I like it before the "Judex." It makes
a nice transition from the lyrical tenor solo to the grand (and I do mean
grand) finale.

The recorded sound is very bright, almost in your face.  I think it works
well for this piece.

Steve Schwartz