In March, the charismatic 27-year-old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel returned to Walt Disney Concert Hall to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the first time since the announcement a year before that he would take over as the orchestra's music director in 2009.

Those concerts included what the Los Angeles Times described as "a fabulous, in-your-face" account of Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique" complete with "the full, highly charged, dripping-with-color Dudamel treatment." If you wonder what that means, you won't after hearing Deutsche Grammophon's recording of that performance, available for download at the DG site and iTunes.

The "Symphonie fantastique" is one of the real orchestra showpieces, and one that suits a colorful, shiny, cinematic brilliance in the L.A. Philharmonic's playing. This is the greatest cartoon music ever written, and, from beginning to end, Dudamel/LA are amazing in their discovery of fresh detail and unity of purpose.

Dudamel's beat is alert, precise and imaginative, and the orchestra is totally with him. Note the pulls and tugs of love-struck yearning in the opening bars of the first movement. Or the flute solo at the end of the movement -- Dudamel takes this at a markedly slow tempo to heighten the suspense for the final outburst, which comes at you like Indiana Jones on a rope. And we haven't even talked about the showy parts yet.

DG's sound is extremely beautiful. The woodwinds come through with great clarity and there is a real sense of orchestral breadth that multitrack recording has often lost. For this reviewer, this version goes right alongside Charles Munch's 1954 classic with the Boston Symphony (reissued not long ago in a remastered SACD format). It's also a promise of great things to come. If only they could get Pixar to work with these guys!

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