These are new names to me. Andrés Orozco-Estrada, who was born in Colombia, became principal conductor of the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich at the beginning of the 2009/10 season. He shows here that he has already made his mark in achieving excellent ensemble and an impressive balance in Berlioz’s exotic score. It is always difficult to believe that the Symphonie fantastique was written only three years after Beethoven’s death, and in it Berlioz virtually created the large Romantic symphony orchestra, even using an idée fixe to link the movements to a programme portraying an artist experiencing unrequited love.

The opening movement, combining ‘Rêveries’ and ‘Passions’, needs a spontaneous flow as the tempo and mood changes, which Orozco-Estrada manages very convincingly, not dashing off passionately at the opening as some conductors do. In the second-movement waltz, ‘Un bal’, his delicate rubato is also just right. The following ‘Scène aux champs’, with its woodwind dialogue beautifully shared and the string cantilena played with touching nuance of phrasing, shows just how good the strings of the Tonkünstler Orchestra are. In the sinister and marvellously scored ‘Marche au supplice’, the symphony explodes: the guillotining of the work’s hero is presented here with elemental force, which Orozco-Estrada and his orchestra obvious relish. But by playing all-out, they ensure that the final ‘Witches’ Sabbath’ is even more grotesque, complete with the Dies irae on the trombones and tolling church bell. The music is built to a superbly thrilling final climax which leaves one breathless on that last brass chord.

The recording is superbly expansive, the acoustic of the Goldener Saal suiting Berlioz’s special effects splendidly. This newest account holds its head high.