This classic performance comes up well again on CD, the sound a little hard at times but everything clear and in place. With what appears to be well over 50 versions of the work available, choice is certainly wide, though there are a good many, some of them by famous names, that pay more attention to the names in question than to Berlioz’s still astonishing romantic vision. Davis remains among those conductors who can seek out the individualities in Berlioz with unerring judgement: the telling emphasis that troubles a ‘normal’ cadence, the lean on a phrase that corrupts it, the crack of a rhythm that makes this March one which ends on the scaffold.
The orchestra is, of course, modern, that is to say not ‘period’ in any form (it does, incidentally, include the extra part for the cornet which Berlioz added, not, in my view, much to the music’s advantage). Those who prefer period instruments, which can indeed reveal colours something near to those heard by Berlioz, deeply influencing the music’s actual invention, will prefer the fine performances by John Eliot Gardiner and Roger Norrington; others can feel themselves as safe in Davis’s hands as any – or rather, as skilfully led on a dangerous experience.'