The six CD versions of the Symphonie fantastique listed above present various problems of selection, difficult of summary. In brief (very brief): the prime choices now seem to be Muti and Davis (Philips), with an interesting third in abbado (DG). Abbado and Davis, incidentally, include the optional cornet part. Davis's performance dates from 1974 and has been remastered: it comes up beautifully clear, and the authority of the interpretation remains. Abbado and the Chicago orchestra are in some ways more extreme in their reactions, though there is no gainsaying Abbado's rapt intensity and his hectic impulse. Muti is in some ways more ferocious than either, and can suggest a sensibility driven to the edge of sanity by its nightmare. All these performances have a sense of the extreme, which is part of the music, without producing the kind of unmotivated excitement that can in this work quickly come to seem spurious. Neither Maazel nor Paita avoid this pitfall. I find Davis's recording still the most closely idiomatic, above all for his sense of where to put the stress in phrases; but no one who chooses either Muti or Abbado for their own qualities of music-making will have cause for regret.'