Pierre Boulez has made a long journey from his days as an enfant terrible in the 1950s, when no composer and no music were safe from his excoriating judgements. Signs of Romantic affinities were in fact appearing from at least the early 1980s, when the conductor Manuel Rosenthal confided to me that ‘Boulez is much more human now’. And if Berlioz is not a touchstone of such affinities, who is?

The first thing to say is that orchestrally this Roméo is superb. The introduction has terrific energy and a wide dynamic range, and Boulez eschews the invented contrasts that John Eliot Gardiner introduces and that some may regard as otiose. The beginning of ‘Roméo seul’ is wonderfully rapt and at the other extreme the Cleveland strings throughout rise to Berlioz’s melodic invention, even if they don’t quite match the warmth of the Vienna Philharmonic strings under Sir Colin Davis; and the Love Scene contains quite a lot of delicate rubato that helps give the whole movement an intimacy and plasticity that reach the heart. At the start of the finale Boulez screws up the tension by observing the mf marking – we sense power being held back with difficulty.

But although Berlioz made it clear that the orchestra in this work were the prime carriers of his message, the chorus and vocal soloists have important parts to play. The Cleveland Chorus do a good job, with excellent French (plaudits for the language coach Denise Massé), and come over with far more presence than the Bavarian Radio Choir, whose words are largely inaudible. But here Gardiner wins the palm: the Monteverdi Choir’s incisive diction and expressive phrasing make them a real player in the drama.

As for the soloists, I would not wish to choose between the sopranos or the tenors in the Gardiner and Boulez recordings – all four are splendid in every respect. It is, as I often find, with Frère Laurent that my worries begin. His music is not really Berlioz’s best and it needs some help. Denis Sedov is accurate but rather dull, and occasionally his high notes sound strained. On the Gardiner disc, Giles Cachemaille has the benefits of being French, of possessing a more sympathetic sound throughout the wide range of the part, and of being able to inject some dramatic impetus into his role. On the other hand, the high strings in the Gardiner version do tend to scream at climaxes and in this respect, setting authenticity aside, you may find the Boulez version more to your taste.

He has a lovely soprano in Melanie Diener, and the opening ‘Villanelle’ in Nuits d’été is clear and sparkling. But I was worried by the funereal speeds of both ‘Le spectre de la rose’ and ‘Sur les lagunes’, and by Boulez’s refusal in the first of these to notice the animato marking (3'28"), which surely helps shape the song. Similarly in ‘Absence’, for all the elegance and beauty of Kenneth Tarver’s voice, there is no agitazione where Berlioz asks for it – again the structure suffers. Throughout the cycle I did feel the force of an old criticism levelled at Boulez, that he doesn’t really mind about voices. If you want a multi-voice rendering of Nuits d’été, as Berlioz intended the orchestral version to be, then Gardiner’s is the one.

It is hard to know which to admire more: Berlioz’s early embrace of memorable quirkiness, or his later infallibility in expunging from those early works any passages that were either merely odd or else just slightly boring. A comparison of the early Huit Scènes de Faust of 1828/29 with those parts reused in La damnation de Faust some 15 years later is instructive. The somewhat laboured opening chorus of the earlier work was jettisoned, but miracles like the songs of the rat and the flea, Marguerite’s Ballad of the King of Thule and her Romance, and Mephistopheles’s ‘Devant la maison’ were taken over pretty well intact. We also get half the soldiers’ chorus – the fine counterpoint between soldiers and students would be the work of a more experienced Berlioz. Tenors who have yearned to get their hands on ‘Devant la maison’ can now do so, in this delightful E major version with guitar.

Dutoit marshals his forces with his usual expertise, and in the ‘Concert de sylphes’ intelligently uses a semichorus of six singers and brings them close to the microphone; the full chorus in Sado’s recording sound thick and ‘unsylphish’ by comparison, and words are hard to hear. Susan Graham sings beautifully and is very moving in her Romance, helped by Dutoit taking due note of the markedly faster speed and ‘agitazione’ required at ‘Je suis à ma fenêtre’. A very welcome issue, supplemented by five Berlioz orchestral songs.