Those who characterise Berlioz as a shallow barnstormer – and yes, such thinking still happens – have clearly not heard L’Enfance du Christ, his 90-minute meditation on Christ’s infancy whose restraint is equalled only by its beauty. Berlioz set his own text for it to music of the utmost tenderness. If his “trilogie sacrée” has never attained the popularity of its composer’s other sacred works, perhaps that’s because it lacks their visceral immediacy; yet the score’s gently shifting moods ensure it is never dull.
Composing an oratorio from the centre outwards may be unorthodox but inspiration first struck Berlioz when the Shepherds’ Farewell popped into his head. The rest fell into place from there. His music wears a coat of many pastoral colours, now archaic, now romantic, now exotic, and in this distinguished Barbican performance Edward Gardner painted each hue with sublime care and craft, the BBC Symphony Orchestra a sensitive palette. In its emphases and theatricality his reading had surprising echoes of Les Troyens, notably in the Saïs episode where the work’s structure slips briefly from oratorio into opera.
It helped that Gardner’s solo quartet was impeccable. Robert Murray’s narrator had the toughest job: he opened the evening with a taxing Prologue and closed it on a bruisingly protracted envoi, “Ô mon âme”. The tenor, however, was on eloquent form and made it all seem like a walk in a Paradise garden. Matthew Rose was the embodiment of basso brilliance in his two contrasting set pieces, first as a baleful King Herod in his lengthy and intense scena, “Toujours ce rêve!”, then as the compassionate Père de famille who shelters the holy family in the triptych’s final volet.