Berlioz: Overtures; Queen Mab Scherzo / Saint-Saens : Omphale’s Spining Wheel , Op. 31

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Munch and Berlioz are like chocolate and peanut butter–they go great together. This disc is the finest collection of Berlioz overtures and short works available, and possibly the best ever recorded. Berlioz was music’s ultimate neurotic: his music is quite simply hyper. It jumps, fidgets, and explodes with bursts of passion, all of it uniquely tuneful and magnificently scored. Charles Munch could lose himself in music like this; here he surrenders to the excitement of the moment and positively revels in the passages where all hell breaks loose. The Boston Symphony plays as if their lives depended on it, and the early-1960s sound hasn’t dated a bit. –David Hurwitz