A pilgrimage to Berlioz.

FOR too many decades, what the musical public remembered of Hector Berlioz was the famous Daumier caricature -- the coattails in pursuit of a bushy head of hair. There were no pilgrimages to that little church on the Rue St. Roch, near the Tuileries and the Louvre, where the first version of his magnificent Requiem was heard. On the old 78-rpm shellacs, the recording companies could give you only tantalizing excerpts -- and only a select audience could hear him in the concert hall and the opera house. This changed with the advent of LPs. Today we can hear almost all the Berlioz oeuvre.

It is only recently that musicologists and music critics have begun to realize the tremendous influence that Berlioz had on the music of his time, as well as the scope and beauty of his work. Listen closely, and you will hear how he at once projected orchestral music past the plateau that followed Beethoven and gave it an excitement that lifts us to this day.

I have listened to the Berlioz Harold in Italy more times than I can remember, and each time I find something in its inner voices that had previously escaped me (as I also did in Norrington's wonderful recording of the Symphonie Fantastique). And so I turned an eager ear to a new reading of the Harold in Italy (Philips 446 676-2) by the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, Gerard Causse violinist, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. I have great respect for Gardiner, but here his baton is leaden. The dynamics are wrong and so are the tempos. This new recording, however, recommends itself by including a lovely but seldom-heard Berlioz work, Tristia. As an alternative I recommend Sir Thomas Beecham's recording of Harold with the Royal Philharmonic and William Primrose on the viola.

The Romeo et Juliette (Philips 144-134 2) by the Vienna Philharmonic, with the Bavarian Radio Chorus, and conducted by Sir Colin Davis, suffers from no such shortcomings as the Gardiner Harold. Berlioz insisted, and justly so, that his Romeo was a symphony -- choral and solo voices notwithstanding. Beethoven attempted this in his Ninth, by appending Schiller's ''Ode to Joy,'' but ended up with a potpourri, whereas Berlioz succeeded in making an integrated work. He rejoiced in its sad and lovely 27-note motif, with its gentle little syncopes. Berlioz must always be played with elan, and over the years I have rejoiced in the London Symphony reading by Pierre Monteux, who knew this. But I can now place beside it what Sir Colin -- with mezzo Olga Borodina, tenor Thomas Moser, and basso Alastair Miles -- brings us.

If you are of my generation, you will remember how in music-appreciation classes we were given mnemonic devices for composers and works. So when the orchestra gave us the downbeat of Schubert's Eighth, our little minds would sing along: ''This is the symphony that Schubert wrote but never finished.'' The Eighth has been renumbered: it is now the Seventh, according to musicologists. A fine symphonic statement, with powerful affirmations and lyric withdrawals, there is nothing ''unfinished'' about it. It is a beautifully tooled piece, one of the many works in his tremendous output which he never heard performed, and it is given a magnificent reading, the best I have heard, by Carlo Maria Giulini and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (Sony SK 66 833). This symphony is a cry to the world and a defiance. The Fourth Symphony, a more contemplative work, is also included on this disc.

There is no longer a need to comment specifically on the Haydn symphonies. They are there, and that is enough. They are there, and Bruno Walter, in Sony's series honoring his greatness as a conductor, is also there. The symphonies are Nos. 88, 96, and 100 (Military), and to them are appended some smaller Mozart works --minuets, dances, opera overtures, etc. (Sony SMK 64 485 & 486).

What does require comment is Claudio Abbado's recordings of Mozart's Symphonies 23 and 36 (Linzer) and the Sinfonia Concertante (K 364), which is historic for me because I wrote about its beauties when I started reviewing records, before World War II but after Moses descended from Sinai with other truths (Sony SK 66 859). Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic offer the Sinfonia with just the right amount of bounce and elegance, withholding the heavy hand of respect which sometimes falls on Mozart.

I also call attention to three Brahms violin sonatas, part of the continuing reissue on CD of the output of Isaac Stern. I need not repeat my words of praise for the technique and interpretive genius of Stern: if this recording were a Coney Island Suite for Violin and Burp Gun, I would still recommend it for what Stern draws from his Strad and his bow (Sony SMK 64 531). The Juilliard String Quartet -- eminent in the field since the Budapest is no longer among us -- presents the Brahms Quintet No. 1 in F Major and No. 2 in G Major (Sony SK 68476). I am in the minority when I say that I do not wholeheartedly respond to the Brahms chamber music, which I find sterile. However, if it is your dish of tea, you can do little better than turn to the Juilliard String Quartet.

From time to time, a publicity-wrapped ''star'' appears on the musical scene. One such is Wynton Marsalis, who plays both jazz and classical trumpet. Marsalis holds sway at New York's Lincoln Center, where, as Terry Teachout notes in Commentary, he has imposed the racist view that jazz is the sole purview of blacks and can be played properly only by them. This erases from the annals a host of great jazzmen -- from Bix Beiderbecke to those who developed the ''Chicago style'' to Jack Teagarden and Benny Goodman. The Marsalis ''jazz documentaries'' on video cassette, moreover, indicate a startling lack of knowledge of the music's history and substance. His own achievements in the jazz field as instrumentalist and improviser hardly reach the heights; his performance lacks the breadth and inspiration of a host of horn players, both black and white, who have preceded him. Now he is presented in the meaninglessly titled In Gabriel's Garden, an album of seventeenth-century trumpet showpieces -- Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, a Purcell rondeau, a John Stanley trumpet voluntary, etc. (Sony SK 66 244). Marsalis plays them correctly and well. I have always felt that a jazz vibrato and attack would enhance the trumpet parts of Baroque music, but no one that I know of has attempted this. Marsalis is no exception.