Marc Chagall's representation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet -- the "star-crossed" lovers.

SF GATE

Berlioz was not lacking in ambition when he set out to combine the legacies of Shakespeare and Beethoven in his dramatic symphony "Romeo and Juliet." And it was the resulting grandiosity -- the score's invigorating sense of sweep and scale -- that was the key to Wednesday's powerhouse performance by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.

In top-rated featured recordings of this piece by Davis (6/1969 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra tops my list of all efforts) and Gardiner, Ozawa et al., many genuine things happen. However, this is the first time I've ever felt the 'pulse' of the work beating throughout the two hours -- as though giving the work a backbone and sense of unity. My foot taped the whole time, as I too was drawn into vortex. The whole audience could feel it.

Sure some of the horns were off kilter upon entry, and the off stage chorus was presented as carnival instead of lushly romantic just before the Love Scene. The "Tra la la" just seemed like another hurried piece to get through, as opposed to the pivotable first climax of the work that I consider it.

Nevertheless, the relentless baton moved forward, beating out time and defining a 'pulse' which, in the end, as I've come to find out after these great many years, gives this great piece it's true 'masterpiecefulness."

A few horn entries better synced and re-taped, and the choir drawn out to an orgiastic high in a few places (slowed down).... Pull this together with the pulse concept, and what you have is the most condensed and direct interpretion of this piece ever presented to an audience. Attenders, consider yourself among the elite! Berlioz is smiling with you -- from one of two places....

-Kevin