【古殿唱片音樂故事】同一部《幻想》，兩個不可重來的時刻：貝蒂尼(Gary Bertini,1927-2005)與富爾內(Jean Fournet,1913-2008)的白遼士《幻想交響曲》
古殿殿主
一位拒絕踏上德國的指揮，為什麼帶著一百個德國高中生去了耶路撒冷？
先說一個讓人困惑的故事。
有一位以色列指揮家，戰後很長一段時間，堅持不在德國工作。邀約來了，他拒絕；再來，他還是拒絕。
1986 年 9 月，同一個人站在耶路撒冷的舞台上，面前坐著一百個 14 到 20 歲的西德青少年。他們一起演奏白遼士的《幻想交響曲》，西德國家廣播與以色列國家廣播一起把這場音樂會錄了下來。
這中間發生了什麼？
此刻我手上有兩張《幻想交響曲》。一張是這場耶路撒冷音樂會的西德原版，金色標籤；另一張是三年前在東京近郊錄下的日本原版，黑底藍字的 DENON 標籤。
如果有人問我「《幻想交響曲》哪個版本最好？」，大多數愛樂者會說孟許(Charles Munch,1891-1968)，或者馬克維契(Igor Markevitch,1912-1983)。這個答案沒有錯。但這兩張唱片要說的不是「哪個最好」，而是：
它們各自記錄了一個再也不可能重來的時刻。
一張的不可重來，在於歷史；另一張的不可重來，在於傳承。而兩張唱片都用上了當時最新的錄音與製作技術，把那個時刻保存得異常清晰。
下面就一張一張說。
第一張｜貝蒂尼與德國聯邦青年管弦樂團：一場和解的現場
他為什麼拒絕德國？
加里·貝蒂尼(Gary Bertini,1927-2005)本名 Shloyme Golergant，1927 年生於比薩拉比亞，那片土地當時屬於羅馬尼亞，今天屬於摩爾多瓦。父親是詩人，把俄文與意第緒文學譯成希伯來文。他年少移居巴勒斯坦，後來在米蘭與巴黎音樂院求學，師事奧乃格(Arthur Honegger,1892-1955)、梅湘(Olivier Messiaen,1908-1992)與娜迪亞·布朗熱(Nadia Boulanger,1887-1979)，回到以色列後幾乎以一己之力，把以色列的合唱與室內樂演奏推上國際水準。
對一個猶太音樂家來說，戰後的德國是一個沉重的地方。據《紐約時報》的訃聞，貝蒂尼起初拒絕在戰後德國工作。直到 1971 年，為了在漢堡國家歌劇院首演以色列作曲家約瑟夫·塔爾(Josef Tal,1910-2008)的歌劇《阿什美代》，他才第一次答應踏上德國。
一旦跨過那道門檻，他就沒有回頭。1983 年，他成為科隆廣播交響樂團（WDR）的首席指揮。1986 年，他正好站在人生的交界上：卸下耶路撒冷交響樂團音樂總監的職務，即將接掌法蘭克福歌劇院。
就在這一年，他把一支西德的國家青年樂團帶到了耶路撒冷。
一百個高中生
德國聯邦青年管弦樂團(Bundesjugendorchester,1969 年創立)的團員，全部是仍在普通中學念書的孩子。他們從全西德的青少年音樂比賽與試奏中選出，一年三次，利用假期集訓、巡演。這個樂團後來出了中提琴家塔貝雅·齊瑪曼(Tabea Zimmermann,1966-)、小提琴家克里斯蒂安·泰茲拉夫(Christian Tetzlaff,1966-)，今天柏林愛樂的團員裡，有二十人出身於此。
有一個巧合我很喜歡。樂團五十週年紀念冊描述當年的創團，用的詞正是「Idée fixe」——固定樂思。就是白遼士在《幻想交響曲》裡用這個詞，指那個揮之不去的愛人主題；德國人用它形容創立一個國家青年樂團的執念。
同一本紀念冊裡，在介紹樂團如何用一台四十噸大卡車運送全部樂器的段落旁，配了一行小小的圖說：1986 年在以色列，必須即興應變。一整車的定音鼓、豎琴與低音提琴跨海運到中東，舞台條件和西德完全不同。這張唱片的聲音，就是在這種條件下錄下來的。
樂團的官方曲目檔案還記下一件事：1986 年夏天，貝蒂尼帶他們準備的曲目，除了白遼士，還有卡爾·阿瑪迪斯·哈特曼(Karl Amadeus Hartmann,1905-1963)的第二號交響曲。哈特曼是納粹時期拒絕讓作品在德國演出、以沉默抵抗的作曲家。德國的孩子把這樣一位作曲家的音樂帶到以色列。
封面上的耶路撒冷
這張唱片的封面，幾乎沒有給演奏者位置。整片畫面是從橄欖山遠眺的耶路撒冷老城，金色的圓頂清真寺居中，城牆下方是古老的墓區。貝蒂尼與團員的黑白排練照，只佔右下一角：白髮的指揮微笑著，身邊圍著一群年輕的面孔。
地點，被放在演奏者之前。
為什麼是「現場」才重要
1990 年，貝蒂尼接受訪問時談到現場演出。他說，一場演出是那一兩百個人在那一刻共同發生的事，「and as such can never be repeated」——因此永遠不能重來。他也說過，錄音像一張照片：照片不會變，人卻一直在變。
這張唱片就是那張照片。二戰結束 41 年、德以建交 21 年，一位曾經拒絕德國的指揮，和一群還不知道自己將來會不會成為音樂家的德國孩子，在三大宗教共同的聖城，演奏一部以斷頭台與女巫夜宴收尾的交響曲。
現場錄音，卻錄得像錄音室一樣好
很多人聽到「現場錄音」，第一個反應是：音質大概要打點折扣。這張唱片會推翻這個預期。
反覆聽這張唱片，最驚訝的是它的空間感。耶路撒冷那個廳堂的堂音，被完整地收了進來——不是錄音室那種被控制的乾淨，而是一個真實空間在呼吸。管樂與弦樂的透明度非常真實：木管的線條清楚浮在弦樂之上，銅管強奏有份量卻不糊成一團，你幾乎可以「看見」一百個孩子坐在舞台上的位置。
這不是偶然。錄音由以色列國家廣播 Kol Israel 的錄音師：麥可·波珀(Michael Popper)，與 harmonia mundi 的錄音師：班·伯恩費爾德(Ben Bernfeld jun.)共同操刀。西德與以色列兩國的廣播錄音團隊，把當時最新的數位錄音器材帶進了音樂廳。
而音樂本身，是青少年不知保留的熱度。從標籤上的時間來看，貝蒂尼讓第三樂章〈田園景色〉從容展開到十六分半，第四樂章〈斷頭台進行曲〉卻推得很急——成熟指揮的結構感，交給尚未成形的手去燃燒青春。
就我目前查得到的資料，這場音樂會沒有找到 CD 再版的紀錄。如果真是如此，這張黑膠就是那一晚唯一的傳世載體。
第二張｜富爾內與東京都交響樂團：最古老的傳承，遇上最新的技術
一條從首演延伸下來的線
1830 年 12 月 5 日下午兩點，《幻想交響曲》在巴黎音樂院演奏廳首演。指揮台上的人，是阿布內克(François-Antoine Habeneck,1781-1849)——兩年前，他創立了巴黎音樂院演奏會協會，第一次讓法國人成套聽到貝多芬的交響曲，也直接催生了法國交響曲的復興。這段歷史，就寫在這張唱片的日文解說裡。
解說沒有寫的，是這條線後來怎麼延續。
這個協會後來的首席指揮之中，有長笛宗師塔法奈爾(Paul Taffanel,1844-1908)，以及他的學生、同樣是長笛家出身的高貝爾(Philippe Gaubert,1879-1941)。而高貝爾在巴黎音樂院教過一個從盧昂來的長笛少年，同時跟著莫伊斯(Marcel Moyse,1889-1984)學長笛。
這個少年，就是讓·富爾內(Jean Fournet,1913-2008)。
阿布內克、塔法奈爾、高貝爾、富爾內：一條法國指揮與長笛傳統的直線。一百五十三年後，這條線延伸到東京近郊——1983 年 5 月 19 日到 21 日，埼玉縣狹山市的市民會館。
他把最後一場音樂會留給了東京
想像一位身材修長、舉止端莊的法國老紳士。富爾內 15 歲就在故鄉盧昂的劇院樂團吹長笛，二戰期間在馬賽指揮，戰後主掌巴黎喜歌劇院十三年，後來把荷蘭當成第二個家，帶過荷蘭廣播愛樂與鹿特丹愛樂。他不是暴君型的指揮，也不靠誇張的動作博取掌聲；排練時很少提高嗓門，是那種溫和的完美主義者，一層一層地把聲音的光澤打磨出來。
1980 年起，他每年都到東京客席都響。1983 年，他正式成為東京都交響樂團的常任客座指揮——錄下這張《幻想》，正是那一年。
他沒有離開這個樂團。1989 年成為都響名譽指揮；2005 年，91 歲的他在都響指揮了人生最後一場音樂會，然後退休，三年後在荷蘭辭世，都響追贈他「永久名譽指揮」。
一位法國指揮，把最後一場音樂會留給了一個日本樂團。
大師日本錄音：從「都響系列—2」到「都響系列—7」
黑膠圈裡有一個迷人的名詞，叫「大師日本錄音」：世界級的大師來到日本，日本唱片公司用自家最頂尖的錄音技術為他們企劃獨家錄音，而且往往只在日本發行。那也是日本經濟最意氣風發的年代。
富爾內與都響，就是一段持續多年的「大師日本錄音」。DENON 為他們規劃了一個系列：1980 年 9 月，在東京荒川區民會館錄下德布西《牧神的午後前奏曲》、拉威爾《圓舞曲》、夏布里耶《西班牙》與伊貝爾《寄港地》，標示為「都響系列—2」；三年後的這張《幻想》，是「都響系列—7」。兩次錄音坐在控制台前的，都是同一位錄音師——林正夫。
從第 2 號到第 7 號，記錄的是一段關係的成長。1980 年，富爾內是每年來訪的客人；1983 年，他成了樂團的一份子。宇野功芳在《幻想》內頁裡說的「黃金搭檔」，就是這三年一點一滴磨出來的默契。
這兩張黑膠，就我所知都只有日本這一版。直到 2006 年，兩次錄音才一起被收進四張組 CD《フルネ＝都響名演集》，以另一種形式回到樂迷手上；但黑膠原版，始終只有當年那一次壓製。
樂評家寫下的「死亡足音」
這張唱片的內頁，附了日本樂評家宇野功芳(Kōhō Uno,1930-2016)的專文。宇野以個人色彩濃烈著稱，很少輕易讚美；但他說，這對組合錄下的白遼士，「斷無不佳之理」。
他也坦白：以富爾內的藝術風格，這絕不會是一版張牙舞爪、魔氣沖天的《幻想》。第一樂章流動、第二樂章灑脫、第三樂章是純粹的音樂美。真正讓人意外的是第四樂章——宇野寫道，尾奏那端莊嚴肅的行進，反而像步步逼近的死亡足音般令人毛骨悚然。
不靠誇張，只靠分寸，就讓人背脊發涼。這正是帶紙上那句標語的意思：排除一切虛飾，把白遼士還原成一個人的戲劇。
世界上第一家數位錄音公司
封面右上角的「PCM DIGITAL RECORDING」，在 1984 年不是一個普通的技術標示，而是日本哥倫比亞的註冊商標。
1972 年 4 月，日本哥倫比亞用自家研發的 DN-023R 錄音機——一台改裝的兩吋錄影帶機——完成了世界上第一批實用的 PCM 數位錄音，比歐洲早兩年、比美國早六年。這張《幻想》錄音時，CD 才上市第二年；錄音已經是數位的，發行卻仍以黑膠為主。
數位錄音、黑膠發行——這是一扇只開了短短幾年的時代之窗。
帶紙上還有一個醒目的紅框：「世界初 B&Kマイク使用」。丹麥的 Brüel & Kjær 原本是做聲學測量儀器的公司，這支麥克風是特別為 DENON 試作的。內頁說，它的頻率響應平直到可以把樂器的直接音、與音樂廳的堂音同時忠實收下——帶紙的說法是：「發燒音響的夢想，終於成真」。
最後：兩張唱片，在東京交會
寫到這裡，我才發現這兩張唱片之間藏著一條線。
1998 年，貝蒂尼成為東京都交響樂團的音樂總監，一直做到 2005 年辭世。而富爾內 91 歲在都響的告別音樂會，正好落在貝蒂尼的任期內。兩位在不同大陸、不同年份錄下《幻想交響曲》的指揮，最後都把生命的終章，交給了同一個東京的樂團。
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【Gudian Music Stories】Two Irrepeatable Moments in One Fantastique: Gary Bertini (1927–2005) and Jean Fournet (1913–2008) Conduct Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique
Why Did a Conductor Who Refused to Set Foot in Germany Lead One Hundred German High Schoolers to Jerusalem?
Consider a curious historical narrative.
For decades following World War II, an Israeli conductor adamantly refused to work in Germany. Invitations arrived; he declined them. More arrived; he declined again.
Yet in September 1986, that same man stood on a concert platform in Jerusalem, facing one hundred West German youths aged fourteen to twenty. Together, they performed Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, captured live in a joint broadcast recording by West German Radio and Israel Public Radio.
What bridged that divide?
Resting before me are two vinyl pressings of the Symphonie fantastique. One is the West German first edition of that Jerusalem concert, bearing a gold label; the other is a Japanese original tracked three years earlier outside Tokyo, adorned with the black-and-blue DENON label.
Ask an experienced listener to name the definitive Symphonie fantastique, and the immediate answers are almost invariably Charles Munch (1891–1968) or Igor Markevitch (1912–1983). Those selections are unassailable. Yet these two discs are not about ranking benchmarks. They document something else:
Each captures an acoustic moment that can never be repeated.
One is irrepeatable because of history; the other is irrepeatable because of artistic lineage. And both deployed the cutting-edge recording technologies of their day to preserve those moments with crystalline transparency.
Disc One | Bertini and the Bundesjugendorchester: A Reconciliation in Sound
Why He Refused Germany
Gary Bertini (1927–2005) was born Shloyme Golergant in Bessarabia, a region then part of Romania and today within Moldova. His father was a poet who translated Russian and Yiddish literature into Hebrew. Emigrating to Mandatory Palestine in his youth, Bertini later pursued rigorous conservatory training in Milan and Paris under Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), and Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979). Returning to Israel, he single-handedly elevated the nation's choral and chamber ensembles to international stature.
For a Jewish musician of his generation, postwar Germany was shadowed by profound trauma. As his New York Timesobituary noted, Bertini initially refused to work on German soil. It was not until 1971, when invited to conduct the world premiere of Israeli composer Josef Tal’s (1910–2008) opera Ashmedai at the Hamburg State Opera, that he finally consented to cross that border.
Once across, he never retreated. In 1983, he was appointed Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne. By 1986, he stood at a personal crossroads: concluding his tenure as Music Director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra while preparing to assume the directorship of the Frankfurt Opera.
It was during this transitional year that he brought West Germany’s national youth orchestra to Jerusalem.
One Hundred High Schoolers
Founded in 1969, the Bundesjugendorchester (National Youth Orchestra of Germany) is staffed entirely by teenagers still attending secondary school. Selected through regional and national competitions (Jugend musiziert), they assemble three times a year during school holidays for rehearsals and international tours. The ensemble would later produce violist Tabea Zimmermann (b. 1966) and violinist Christian Tetzlaff (b. 1966); today, roughly twenty members of the Berlin Philharmonic are alumni.
A curious parallel appears in the orchestra's fiftieth-anniversary monograph: it describes the ensemble's founding mandate using the phrase idée fixe—the exact term Berlioz coined in the Symphonie fantastique for the obsessive, recurring melody representing the beloved. The Germans used it to convey their obsession with building a premier youth orchestra.
In that same monograph, alongside a photograph of a forty-ton freight lorry used to haul instruments across Europe, sits an archival caption: 1986 in Israel—improvisation was essential. A full complement of timpani, harps, and double basses had been shipped across the Mediterranean into hall conditions radically different from those at home. The sound pressed into this vinyl was captured under those very circumstances.
The orchestra's archives record another detail: alongside Berlioz, the score Bertini prepared with the youths for that 1986 summer tour was the Symphony No. 2 by Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–1963). Hartmann had chosen "inner emigration" during the Third Reich, withdrawing from German musical life in silent defiance. German teenagers were bringing this composer's music directly to Israel.
Jerusalem on the Jacket
The front cover reserves little visual real estate for the musicians. Instead, it presents an expansive view of the Old City of Jerusalem looking out from the Mount of Olives, the golden Dome of the Rock commanding the center above ancient hillside cemeteries. A black-and-white rehearsal snapshot of Bertini and his young charges is tucked modestly into the lower-right corner: the white-haired maestro smiling, surrounded by earnest teenage faces.
The geography of the event is placed before the performers.
The Reality of the Concert Hall
In a 1990 interview, Bertini reflected on live music-making: a performance is a shared event binding one or two hundred musicians and their audience at a single point in time, "and as such can never be repeated." A studio recording, he observed, is like a photograph: the photograph stays frozen, while human beings continue to change.
This disc is that photograph. Forty-one years after the end of World War II, and twenty-one years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between West Germany and Israel, a conductor who had once refused to set foot on German soil joined hands with German youths in the holy city of three world faiths, performing a symphonic drama that culminates in the executioner's scaffold and a witches' sabbath.
A Live Aircheck with Studio Polish
Many listeners assume that live captures inherently compromise audio fidelity. This pressing dismantles that assumption.
Listening closely, the spatial presentation is immediate. The natural acoustic decay of the Jerusalem auditorium is preserved in full—not with clinical, multitrack isolation, but with the acoustic volume of a real hall breathing around the music. The transparency between winds and strings is vivid: woodwind counter-melodies hover cleanly above the string desks, brass tuttis carry visceral weight without acoustic distortion, and the physical seating of the young players across the stage is readily apparent.
This engineering was no accident. The session was balanced collaboratively by Michael Popper of Israel Public Radio (Kol Israel) and Ben Bernfeld Jr. of Harmonia Mundi. Technical broadcast units from both nations set up contemporary digital field recorders on site.
The performance itself burns with youthful commitment. The label timings show Bertini allowing the third movement, Scène aux champs, to unfold at a broad sixteen and a half minutes, contrasted against a pressed tempo in the Marche au supplice—a seasoned conductor imposing architectural breadth upon an ensemble playing with abandon.
Surviving catalog records reveal no trace of a commercial compact disc reissue of this live performance. This German vinyl pressing stands as the sole surviving medium of that evening.
Disc Two | Fournet and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony: Ancient Lineage Meets Digital Mastering
A Direct Line from the Premiere
At 2:00 PM on December 5, 1830, the Symphonie fantastique received its world premiere in the hall of the Paris Conservatoire. On the podium stood François-Antoine Habeneck (1781–1849)—the conductor who, two years earlier, had founded the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, introducing Parisian audiences to Beethoven’s symphonies and sparking the revival of the French symphonic tradition. That history is detailed in the Japanese liner notes of this release.
What the liner notes omit is the lineage that followed.
Among the subsequent chief conductors of that historic Parisian society were the flute master Paul Taffanel (1844–1908) and his celebrated pupil Philippe Gaubert (1879–1941). At the Conservatoire, Gaubert taught a young flutist who had arrived from Rouen, who was simultaneously studying under Marcel Moyse (1889–1984).
That young flutist was Jean Fournet (1913–2008).
Habeneck, Taffanel, Gaubert, Fournet: an unbroken lineage of French conducting and wind pedagogy. One hundred and fifty-three years after the premiere, that line reached Sayama Civic Hall in Saitama Prefecture, just outside Tokyo, between May 19 and 21, 1983.
A Final Concert Entrusted to Tokyo
Picture an aristocratic French gentleman of tall stature and understated physical grace. Fournet was playing flute in the theater orchestra of Rouen at fifteen, conducted in Marseille during World War II, served as music director of the Opéra-Comique in Paris for thirteen years after the war, and subsequently made the Netherlands his second home, directing the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He was not a dictatorial podium figure, nor did he use theatrical gestures to court applause. Rarely raising his voice in rehearsals, he worked as a quiet perfectionist, polishing instrumental timbres layer by layer.
Beginning in 1980, Fournet visited Tokyo annually to guest-conduct the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (TMSO). In 1983, he was appointed the orchestra's Regular Guest Conductor—the exact year this Fantastique was recorded.
He remained bound to the ensemble for the rest of his life. Named Honorary Conductor in 1989, the ninety-one-year-old maestro mounted the podium in Tokyo in 2005 to lead the final concert of his career. Retiring immediately afterward, he died three years later in the Netherlands; the orchestra subsequently bestowed upon him the posthumous title of "Permanent Honorary Conductor."
A French maestro who reserved his farewell concert for a Japanese orchestra.
"The Master in Japan": From Series 2 to Series 7
In Asian vinyl collecting, there is an enduring subcategory known as "The Master in Japan" (Meishō Nihon Rokuon). International conductors arrived in Tokyo, where domestic record labels used proprietary technologies to capture exclusive sessions, often pressed and distributed solely within the domestic Japanese market. This coincided with the economic apex of Japan's bubble era.
Fournet’s partnership with the TMSO was a cornerstone of that culture. DENON planned an ongoing series: in September 1980, inside the Arakawa Public Hall in Tokyo, they taped Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Ravel’s La Valse, Chabrier’s España, and Ibert’s Escales, issued as "TMSO Series 2." Three years later, this Symphonie fantastique arrived as "TMSO Series 7." Both sessions were balanced by the same balance engineer: Masao Hayashi.
The trajectory from Series 2 to Series 7 documents an evolving relationship. In 1980, Fournet was an esteemed annual visitor; by 1983, he was a member of their musical family. What critic Kōhō Uno described in the gatefold as a "Golden Partnership" was the mutual phrasing forged over those three seasons.
Both titles were pressed exclusively in Japan. It was not until 2006 that the recordings were compiled onto the four-CD retrospective box set Fournet & TMSO Master Performances; the original analog vinyl remains limited to this single 1983 first pressing.
The "Footsteps of Approaching Death"
The gatefold contains an analytical essay by Japanese music critic Kōhō Uno (1930–2016). Renowned for an idiosyncratic, uncompromising style that rarely offered unearned praise, Uno wrote that Berlioz under this pairing "could not possibly result in anything less than excellence."
Yet he was candid: given Fournet’s aesthetic disposition, this reading would never indulge in exaggerated theatrics or demonic distortion. The opening movement flows with poise, the second moves with balletic grace, and the third is realized as pure lyrical beauty. The surprise arrives in the fourth movement, the Marche au supplice. Uno observed that the disciplined tempo of the coda generated an unsettling chill, advancing like the steady, inevitable footsteps of approaching death.
Achieving tension through proportion rather than histrionics: this captures the slogan on the obi strip: Stripping away all empty ornament to restore Berlioz as human drama.
The World's Pioneer in Digital Encoding
The "PCM DIGITAL RECORDING" logo in the upper-right corner was no ordinary technical marker in 1984; it was a proprietary trademark of Nippon Columbia (DENON).
In April 1972, Nippon Columbia deployed its proprietary DN-023R—a field recorder built around a modified two-inch broadcast videotape transport—to complete the world's first commercial PCM digital recordings, two years ahead of European labs and six years ahead of American majors. When this Fantastique was taped, the compact disc had entered the market barely twelve months earlier; while the session tape was encoded digitally, commercial distribution remained anchored in vinyl.
Digitally encoded master tapes pressed directly to microgroove vinyl: an engineering window that remained open for only a brief few years.
Across the obi strip sits a prominent red banner: *World's First Commercial Recording Utilizing B&K Studio Microphones.*Denmark’s Brüel & Kjær was originally an engineering firm specializing in acoustic measurement instrumentation; these microphones were custom prototypes provided to DENON for classical balancing. The liner notes explain that their linear frequency response captured the direct acoustic attack of the instruments and the natural ambient decay of the auditorium simultaneously—a capability the obi heralded as: The Audiophile’s Ultimate Dream Realized at Last.
A Final Convergence in Tokyo
Examining these two pressings, an unexpected geographic connection emerges.
In 1998, Gary Bertini was named Music Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, serving until his death in 2005. Jean Fournet’s farewell concert at age ninety-one took place before that exact Tokyo ensemble during Bertini’s tenure. Two conductors who recorded the Symphonie fantastique decades apart on separate continents ultimately entrusted the closing chapters of their artistic lives to the very same Japanese orchestra.