Krivine's performance is at its most effective in the more delicate passages of the symphony. ''Un bal'' waltzes along nicely, with tinkling harps elegantly decorating the lilt of the music, and in the ''Scene aux champs'' there is a graceful cor anglais and a beautifully judged violin counterpoint dancing around the cellos' main theme. But this is by no means the whole of the work. Krivine's exaggerated ritardandos and accelerandos do not really animate the opening melody, nor the idee fixe, and without a stronger grasp on Berlioz's unusual sonata structure in this movement, the pull back to a sentimental caressing of the religioso close seems superficial. As elsewhere in the work, this seems to spring from some lack of deeper rhythmic motivation. So the ''March'' lacks ferocity, and the clarinets in the ''Witches' Sabbath'' seem rather merry, not so much an obscene parody as a jolly ronde des paysans.
The recording is good and clear, attentive to the details of Berlioz's orchestration, but the performance cannot really be set above the recent version from the Orchestre de Paris under Semyon Bychkov, nor other excellent ones, such as the reissued recording by Sir Colin Davis or the period-instrument accounts by Gardiner and Norrington.'