BENJAMIN BRITTEN (PT. 1)

BIOGRAPHY

Benjamin Britten was born on the day of the Patron Saint of Music – St. Cecilia – 22nd November in 1913 in Lowestoft. He showed remarkable skill at composition from his earliest days.
In 1924 he met Frank Bridge (1879-1941), a fine composer in his own right, and became his pupil; through him he developed an appreciation of contemporary music with scores by Bartók and the Schönberg school, particulary Berg.
In 1930 he entered the Royal College of Music and developed the pianistic skills which made him such a brilliant interpreter of both his own music and other greats particularly Mozart and Schubert. From these times date the beautiful A Hymn to the Virgin, Quatre Chansons Françaises and the Sinfonietta, his official Op. 1.
He visited Vienna in 1934 and saw Wozzeck but family resistance prevented him studying with Berg (who, in any case, died from blood poisoning caused by an insect sting a year later). He worked for some years in the film unit of the General Post Office where he met W.H. Auden whose poetry inspired the brilliant song cycle Our Hunting Fathers. The experience in the film unit enabled him to develop the expressive immediacy and technical abilities – often using small and unconventional resources – which would assist his composition of operas in the years to come.
In 1939 he decided to follow Auden to America, accompanying him was the tenor Peter Pears (1910-1986) who was to be the inspiration behind so many great operatic roles and song cycles. There he composed the Sinfonia da Requiem, the Michelangelo Sonnets and the First Quartet. His first opera, Paul Bunyan, to an Auden libretto, was also composed there but then withdrawn (it was revived for the Aldeburgh Festival in the year he died).
He started to get the pangs of homesickness especially when he read, by chance, an article by E.M. Forster on the Suffolk poet Crabbe (whose work was to lead to arguably his greatest success) and he returned to England in 1942. He wrote A Ceremony of Carols and Hymn to St. Cecilia (another Auden text) during this year.
For British Opera the date 7th June 1945 will always remain a red-letter day as it heralded the premiere of a masterpiece, Peter Grimes. The triumph not only established Britten as Purcell’s successor as Britain’s greatest music dramatist but its numerous performances abroad showed that Britain had an international composer celebrity.
The Rape of Lucretia was premiered the following year as was the work by which Britten is probably best remembered – certainly by thankful schoolchildren for their guide to the Orchestra. Here he subjects the theme by Purcell to a series of ingenious variations played by each member of the orchestra and then as groups and finally a fugue where everything comes together in a simply unforgettable coda.
Indeed when one examines Britten’s output it is hard not to credit him with at least one work of genius, if not a masterpiece, virtually every year for the rest of his composing life – whether it be an opera, for example The Turn of the Screw in 1954 or A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1960; a choral work, for example Spring Symphony in 1949 or the War Requiem in 1961, a large vocal work, for example Serenade for tenor, horn and strings in 1943, Nocturne in 1958 and Phaedra in 1975; a smaller vocal work, for example the Canticles of 1947, 1952, 1954, 1971 & 1974; the works he wrote for Mstislav Rostropovich – the Cello Sonata in 1961, the Cello Symphony in 1963 and the three Solo Cello Suites in 1964, 1967 & 1971; the two remaining string quartets in 1945 & 1975 and a full length ballet The Prince of the Pagodas in 1956.
Besides setting many classic poets from Britain including Blake, Burns, Coleridge, Donne, Hardy, Keats, Jonson, Milton, Owen, Shakespeare, Shelley, Spenser, Tennyson and Wordsworth he also set texts in French (Hugo, Rimbaud and Verlaine), Italian (Michelangelo), German (Hölderlin) and Russian (Pushkin).
He was also partly responsible for the reawakening of interest in the music of his great predecessor, Henry Purcell by making realizations of a large number of his works. He also launched the music festival in his adopted town of Aldeburgh.

THE COLLECTOR'S EDITION (2008)
PART 1
320 KBPS

This Collector's Edition presents a challenge to reviewers. There's so much of it. I could never do it any sort of justice if I approached this as if reviewing a smaller set. This, after all, comprises 37 CDs. As it is all I have been able to do is to sample, reminisce about known recordings and write around the subject. With this caveat stated, let's make a start.
There are three principal strands of Britten recordings. These are broadly tied into and defined by record companies, artists and eras. First we have Britten recording Britten for Decca. It’s very much of the 1960s and of Aldebugh and of Peter Pears. It’s also the most exhaustive survey. And it’s available in several princely Decca boxes. It has panache and authority given its identification with the composer.
Then from the 1980s and 1990s you have an outcrop from the now defunct Collins. These have found their way onto Naxos and very nicely done they are too. Often these involve Britten’s successor at Aldeburgh Steuart Bedford who worked with the composer. There’s no box of these but the series can be picked up inexpensively in individual Naxos discs.
Lastly – and to some extent contemporaneous with the Collins project we have the activities of EMI. These are represented in this box and gravitate around various names: Previn, Rattle and Hickox (pre-Chandos). The outliers in the EMI set are Haitink, Mork, Isserlis, Brunelle, the Endellion Quartet and Iona Brown. Many of these recordings belong to the period 1982-2002. There are appearances by Reginald Goodall, Britten and Pears (songs recorded in the 1940s) and Steuart Bedford. Then again there’s Goodall in a late 1940s Rape of Lucretia and excerpts from Grimes. The Previn Spring Symphony, the Berglund/Haendel Violin Concerto and works directed by Philip Ledger and David Willcocks are firmly of the 1970s.
If you have been around for a while you might not think of Britten and EMI as natural partners. After all Britten was very much Decca property and vice versa. Over the years EMI has gradually amassed a substantial representation of his works. Some of these - often pre Second World War pieces - were never recorded by Decca. Decca are strong on the operas where EMI can only manage a sampling even though some of these have not been tackled by Decca. Paul Bunyan is an operetta but here it comes from EMI/Virgin. The EMI Grimes is Haitink's magnificently recorded 1992 version with Anthony Rolfe Johnson as Grimes. The Turn of the Screw is from 2002 with Ian Bostridge as Peter Quint and Daniel Harding conducting. We also have A Midsummer Night's Dream from 1990 as conducted by Richard Hickox. It's magical and made me regret that Britten never essayed an opera on The Tempest. Finally there's the aforementioned complete 1947 Reginald Goodall-conducted Rape of Lucretia with Pears as the Male Chorus and 40 or so minutes of extracts from a 1948 Grimes with Pears. There he is in much better voice but still with that hint of shredded tone under strain and a certain archness of manner.
While Decca can boast of the authority of recordings where the composer conducts and Pears sings one might naturally want to try something different. This set allows that at length. It also helps if, like me, you are allergic to Pears' voice - though his sappier voice of the 1940s can be heard on CDs 24, 27, 36-37. I have distant yet abiding memories of the almost comedic horror of watching and listening to the braying Pears in a BBC black and white television broadcast in the late 1960s - I think it must have been Owen Wingrave. I turned away. Later experiences confirmed the negative impression. It's a personal foible but an obstacle to enjoyment. That is one of the reasons why this set which offers an alternative approach has such attractions. Even then - as mentioned already - if you would like to hear Pears at his peak EMI offer the 1948 Grimes excerpts and a 1947 Lucretia alongside some Britten folksongs and Purcell realisations, Michelangelo and Donne Sonnet sets. In fairness Pears makes a very positive impression in the lilting Come you not from Newcastle.
Discovering Britten through other approaches has for me had its satisfying discoveries including learning the Serenade through the CFP Ian Partidge analogue 1970s recording and the Violin Concerto, not through Lubotsky, but via Rodney Friend and even more strongly through Ida Haendel. Sadly, maybe, Neil Mackie is preferred over Partridge when the choices were made for the present set. In fact he gives a fine steady and strongly projected performance and Barry Tuckwell is the fruity horn-player. We can regard Colin Matthews' orchestration of Now sleeps the crimson petal as a glowing appendix to the Serenade. Again Tuckwell's horn comes into play in this piece. It is most luminously performed and recorded.
Haendel is favoured for this box over Friend. She gives the Violin Concerto a strong Waltonian romantic ‘kick’ which eludes the more objective Mark Lubotsky on Decca. The same can be said for Andsnes/CBSO and the Piano Concerto over Richter/ECO.
The chamber music is thoroughly explored across CDs 9-14 and we get to hear many of the early works omitted from the Decca edition. The well-regarded mainstays here are the Endellion from 1986, Truls Mørk in the cello suites and Stephen Hough in the solo piano music including a surprisingly touching Nocturne (part of the Sonatina romantica). Much more declamatory and rugged is the Introduction and Rondo Burlesca in which Hough is joined by Ronan O'Hora. On CD 14 the remainder is mopped up including the Suite for violin and piano (Barantschik), the Cello Sonata with the underrated Moray Welsh, the Six Metamorphoses (Roy Carter) and Bream's 1992 Dowland Nocturnal. In the latter Bream delights in the technical and mood complexities of the dissonantly obsessive and plangent Inquieto. Speaking of Bream, reminds me of another absentee from this box - the chamber ensemble version of The Courtly Dances from Gloriana. This was enjoyably set down by the Bream Consort in the 1960s but that was a Decca or possibly RCA item. As compensation we do hear the dances in their full orchestral regalia with the RLPO and Takuo Yuasa. Gloriana was never recorded by Decca - at least not while Britten was alive. This Coronation year opera seems to have missed a beat. It lived on in the Symphonic Suite and the Courtly Dances as arranged by Julian Bream. The suite includes the Dances as well as a sumptuously haunting yet gentle Lute Song which is beautifully put across in this set by Jonathan Small (oboe) and Mair Jones (harp). This is Britten in pastoral English mode - a rare occurrence. The Tudor percussive patterning was to be picked up again in the Hankin Booby movement of the late suite A time there was here played on CD 6 by Rattle and the CBSO.
Another stalwart across this set is Robert Tear. He is often good but sounds tested to discomfort in the quick fire When will my May come in Previn's otherwise fine version of the Spring Symphony. Interesting to see that for that celebrity 1978 recording the chorus-master was none other than Richard Hickox who was then soon to make his Rubbra Masses LP for RCA with the St Margaret’s Singers.
CD 21 is, for me, one of the most intriguing. It includes The Company of Heaven music to a radio play on the subject of angels - it is by no means entirely serene. The war in heaven movement is restive, urgent and full of drum and organ-emphasised attack. Unusually for Britten the searing emotional strings at the end of that movement cry out with undisguised passion.
There are some possibly surprising artist entries in this set. I have already mentioned Reginald Goodall - more strongly associated later in his career with Wagner and Bruckner. Sarah Brightman better known for the Lloyd Webber connection is on CD26 in six Britten folksongs. Jonathan Lemalu is there in a 2005 recording of the Tit for Tat cycle. Söderström rides the whooping wave of Our Hunting Fathers - for me one of Britten's masterpieces. Try the eruptive wildness of the Rats Away movement which might almost have been written for Jane Manning such are its demands. Söderström puts this across well though I have heard more possessed performances including a broadcast by Heather Harper with Charles Groves and the BBCSO on 27 July 1976. This is writing that is neither cerebral nor precious. It carries a glorious emotional cargo as well as being brilliant. This paved the way for other rapturous concert pieces such as Maw's Scenes and Arias. The Vasari Singers give us the late choral cycle Sacred and Profane. Join the queue to kick me for decadent taste when I express my regret at the continued absence from the catalogue of Swingle II’s version of Hymn to St Cecilia but then that disc also offers my favourite version of RVW's Three Shakespeare Songs. Still, that Swingle II LP (RL25112) from about 1975 is an RCA item. It should be reissued and urgently.
The big players in this set are Rattle and the CBSO with supporting roles for Steuart Bedford, Hickox, Ledger and Marriner. There are also one-offs of great distinction. Take Knussen and the London Sinfonietta in the gamelan-bejewelled Prince of the Pagodas - wonderful score - a legacy of a world tour that took him to the South Seas and into contact with another gamelan-influenced composer, Colin McPhee with whom he recorded on 78s a two piano version of Balinese Ceremonial music. There’s also the Previn Spring Symphony recorded at the height of his youthful fame yet with the statesmen and stateswomen of British music as soloists.
My own favourites here include the Diversions for piano (left-hand) and orchestra. Yes, it was written for Paul Wittgenstrein but was never contractually shackled in the way that many such commissions were. I discovered this piece through a wonderful Proms broadcast in 1978 with Viktoria Postnikova and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Peter Donohoe, champion of many British piano concertos is splendidly at one with the work’s grotesquerie. The gaunt Russian Funeral Music is magnificent dour and tragic. The wild-eyed Grainger-quirky A Time There was is wonderful - one of the works that Bernstein recorded in Britten's last years. The Ballad of Heroes to mark the Spanish Civil War has Republican-orientated words by Swingler and Auden. This sincere and moving work would pair well with RVW's Dona Nobis Pacem and Holst's Dirge for Two Veterans.
The Paul Bunyan operetta is quirky but delightful and perhaps belongs in a loosely bounded genre with Copland's The Tender Land, Shostakovich's Cheryamushki, Walter Leigh's Jolly Roger, Anthony Burgess's Blooms of Dublin (will this ever be revived, I wonder) and Tippett's ballad-opera Robin Hood.
Pesek's RLPO from 1990 give a splendid reading of the Sinfonia da Requiem which is also wonderfully done by Previn on the same label (but not here). It is an impressive work with a scorching and completely confident mature power. There are early indications that he had been impressed by Shostakovich and even hints that Bernard Herrmann might have been inspired by this work in his Death Hunt horn scherzo from On Dangerous Ground. The close-up bells of Sunday Morning in the Grimes interludes toll with more than sadness. There's threat there too; I have never heard that before. The symphonic gravamen of the Grimes' Passacagalia is also well done and here benefits from being placed between Moonlight and the uproar and welter of Storm. That Passacaglia has the epic stride of Lennox Berkeley's 1946 Nocturne for Orchestra - still unrecorded along with many of his early works including the oratorio Jonah, the grand cello concerto and much else. I rather miss the heroism and grandeur of those early works – the later elegance and sophistication is a thin substitute. Britten's early music was no whit less brilliant as we can hear in the warmly recorded Young Apollo with Donohoe as the thunderous dazzling pianist and the violinist Felix Kok (then Leader of the CBSO) among the soloists.
This is another wonderful bargain from EMI. You make sacrifices though in return for a compact clamshell box and a very low price. There are no notes at all and no texts - yet much of this music is vocal. So you may need to go looking for texts and background - not that it is in short supply. Also you may well benefit from the undistracted concentration of listening to just the music.
So this box is certainly for you if you plan or even hope to explore Britten for the first time. It is also an apt purchase if you would like to encounter new approaches to interpretation freed somewhat from the iconic Britten-Decca Aldeburgh hegemony of the 1960s and 1970s. I have to concede that the great Decca legacy bears the authoritaitve imprimatur of the composer but if Britten's music is to live it must continue to find new voices. (Taken from MUSICWEB International)

Disc 1
1-3) Sinfonia da Requiem Op.20
I. Lacrymosa
II. Dies irae
III. Requiem aeternam
4-8) Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from ‘Peter Grimes’ Op.33
I. Dawn
II. Sunday Morning
III. Moonlight
IV. Passacaglia
V. Storm
9-23) The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Op.34
(Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell)
I. Theme (Allegro maestroso e largamente)
II. Var. A: Flutes and piccolo
III. Var. B: Oboes (Lento)
IV. Var. C: Clarinets (Moderato)
V. Var. D: Bassoons (Allegro alla marcia)
VI. Var. E: Violins (Brillante: alla polacca)
VII. Var. F: Violas (Meno mosso)
VIII. Var. G: Cellos
IX. Var. H: Double Basses (Comminciando tento ma poco accel. al Allegro)
X. Var. I: Harp (Maestoso)
XI. Var. J: Horns (L'istesso tempo)
XII. Var. K: Trumpets (Vivace)
XIII. Var. L: Trombones and Bass Tuba (Allegro pomposo)
XIV.Var. M: Percussion (Moderato)
XV. Fugue (Allegro molto)

Disc 2
1) Canadian Carnival Op.19
2-13) Diversions for piano (left hand) and orchestra Op.21
Theme
Variation I. Recitative
Variation II. Romance
Variation III. March
Variation IV. Arabesque
Variation V. Chant
Variation VI. Nocturne
Variation VII. Badinerie
Variation VIII. Burlesque
Variation IX. Toccata I - Toccata II - Cadenza
Variation X. Adagio
Variation XI. Finale (Tarentella).
14) Scottish Ballad Op.26
15) An American Overture Op.27
16) Occasional Overture Op.38
17) Building of the House Op.79

Disc 3
1-4) Piano Concerto Op.13
I. Toccata
II. Waltz
III. Impromptu
IV. March
5-7) Violin Concerto Op.15
I. Moderato con moto
II. Vivace
III. Passacaglia (Andante lento - Un poco meno mosso)
8) Young Apollo Op.16

Disc 4
1-4) Simple Symphony Op.4
I. Boisterous Bourrée
II. Playful Pizzicato
III. Sentimental Sarabande
IV. Frolicsome Finale
5-15) Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge Op.10
Introduction and Theme
Variation 1: Adagio
Variation 2: March
Variation 3: Romance
Variation 4: Aria italiana
Variation 5: Bourrée classique
Variation 6: Wiener Walzer
Variation 7: Moto perpetuo
Variation 8: Funeral March
Variation 9: Chant
Variation 10: Fugue and Finale
16) Prelude and Fugue Op.29
17) Lachrymae Op.48a

Disc 5
1-9) Symphonic Suite from ‘Gloriana’ Op.53a
I. The tournament
II. The Lute Song
III. The Courtly Dances
March
Coranto
Pavane
Morris Dance
Galliard
Lavolta
IV. Gloriana moritura
10-14) Cello Symphony Op.68
I. Allegro maesteoso
II. Presto inquieto
III. Adagio
Cadenza
IV. Passacaglia (Andante allegro)
15) Men of Goodwill