It all rather depends on your pocket. If you want medium-price, medium quality versions of three of Berlioz's major works—Romeo et Juliette, Harold in Italy and the Requiem—this pair of two-disc boxes offers good value. But, to be honest, it has to be said that better performances are available of all three if you're prepared to pay a bit more. It is somewhat perverse that the one area without a competitive version and whose performance is entirely recommendable should be that of the choral songs with piano or harmonium accompaniment—but many of these find Berlioz at a commonplace stage. The fervour of the patriotic songs—Irish, Breton, Frankish, French and supra-national (Le temple universel)—easily slips into tub-thumping; the religious songs are of village organist level; there is, however, a certain charm in the Priere du matin. The one outstanding exception is the eerie Ballet des ombres, which Berlioz withdrew immediately after publication and later incorporated into the Queen Mab scherzo of Romeo et Juliette.
In Maazel's performance of that vast programmatic symphony, that movement fails to sparkle as it should, though Michel Senechal gives point to the previous Mab scherzetto. His fellow-soloists are less convincing: Christa Ludwig makes rather heavy going of her couplets, and Nicolai Ghiaurov, fine as is his voice, adopts too operatic a style for Friar Laurence (and his French is not good). The best sections here are the Capulets' Ball, which has plenty of vigour (though the oboe solo preceding it sounds thin), and the scene of Juliet's death; but overall Maazel's reading has less sense of drama than Davis's (Philips) or Dutoit's (Decca).
Harold in Italy has the advantage of an excellent viola soloist in Robert Vernon, who provides an eloquent depiction of Byron's melancholy hero; and the orchestral playing is efficient, even if it might have had crisper bite in the Brigands' Orgy movement. The faults of balance which JW mentioned in the LP version seem to have been corrected; and altogether this is a very acceptable performance of this curious work which—as Paganini complained—makes increasingly less use of the solo instrument as it proceeds. Berlioz's Requiem should, like the fat boy in The Pickwick Papers, aim to make our flesh creep. It doesn't really succeed in that here: the orchestra has absorbed the once famous bizarre effects so well that they have lost their impact and sound everyday, and Maazel's approach in general seems low-voltage. This is all very well in the Offertory and Sanctus (with Kenneth Riegel showing no signs of strain in the high tessitura), but elsewhere the chorus, frankly, lets things down: it lacks firmness in ''Quaerens me'', and in several places its intonation is not up to the standard we have come to expect today. By the side of Davis (Philips) or Bernstein (Sony Classical) this is no competitor.'