Britten
David Nice
It’s raining Bunyans, and since Britten’s early American operetta with its sights originally set on Broadway teems with song and invention that can’t be a bad thing. A fortnight after Welsh National Youth Opera commandeered Stephen Fry to voice-over the giant American folk hero of the title, their counterparts in BYO are offering London its first production for 15 years. There were singers at the starts of their careers in that Royal Opera special – remember Susan Gritton and Mark Padmore, anyone? – but not enough: it ought to be a paradise for the young, and here it truly was.In my books, Read more ...
geoff brown
Purity and holiness filled the air. Boy choristers in red cassocks filed onto the platform. The BBC announcer, paraded soon after, promised “choral music to carry us into the after life”. Had I come to the right place? Was I attending my own funeral service? I needn’t have worried. This was only a Late Night Prom, not of the meatiest kind maybe, but of a kind certainly to tickle the heart of Proms director and British music enthusiast Roger Wright. Two composer centenaries were neatly combined, both of them home grown, born in 1913. One was Benjamin Britten, fantastically gifted, nearly Read more ...
David Nice
You may well ask whether theartsdesk hasn’t already exhausted all there is to say about Glyndebourne’s most celebrated Britten production of recent years. I gave it a more cautious welcome than most on its first airing, troubled a little by the literalism of Michael Grandage’s production and the defects in all three principal roles. Alexandra Coghlan was more enthusiastic about this season’s revival but found one crucial shortcoming in Mark Padmore as Captain Vere, the god of the floating kingdom suffering a mortal blow when his repressed resident villain the Master at Arms John Claggart is Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Reading through WH Auden’s libretto for Britten’s first stage work – the so-called operetta Paul Bunyan – it’s sometimes hard to decide whether the intention was to participate in the great American dream or to make fun of it. In 1941 both artists were living in the United States and writing for Americans, who famously didn’t take to the work’s blend of folksy condescension and sententious eloquence. The combination is still faintly queasy. Towards the end, a Disneyesque dog and two cats pray for deliverance “from a homespun humour manufactured in the city”, and the mind inevitably strays Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
There have already been many musical tributes to Sir Colin Davis, whose death in April left us all so much the poorer, but last night’s from the London Symphony Orchestra was particularly and wonderfully poignant. Davis himself was originally scheduled to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra – an ensemble whose relationship with him extended back over 50 years – but was replaced, fittingly, by his protégé Daniel Harding. A planned Sibelius Second Symphony was exchanged for Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 – a work of valediction, whose funeral march can rarely have paced with such delicate gravity. Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s not a crowd-pleaser like Albert Herring, nor wittily fanciful like A Midsummer Night’s Dream or macabre like The Turn of the Screw and certainly not the classic that Peter Grimes has become, and until three years ago Glyndebourne had never even staged Britten’s Billy Budd. But Michael Grandage’s 2010 production was a sea-changer. Aided by Mark Elder in the pit, the director made his operatic debut with devastating simplicity, reminding us all of the power of this uneasy tragedy. This anniversary year the production returns, and though there are some significant changes among the crew of Read more ...
mark.padmore
“O what have I done, o what, what have I done? Confusion, so much is confusion.” So sings Captain Vere in the Prologue of Billy Budd and Benjamin Britten plunges us straight into this confusion from the very first bar as we are left in uncertainty which of two keys - B flat major and B minor - will prevail. Their simultaneous sounding is an apt metaphor for the moral ambiguity which pervades the opera and which is given a dramatic, meteorological presence when the mist descends on the ship in Act 2.I have known and loved Billy Budd ever since seeing it at ENO in 1988 in the Tim Albery staging Read more ...
graham.rickson
Britten: Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto Howard Shelley (piano), Tasmin Little (violin), BBC Philharmonic/Edward Gardner (Chandos)Edward Gardner starts Britten’s Piano Concerto with amazing ferocity and drive. Winds and horns make light work of their repeated quavers, and Howard Shelley relishes the fast tempo when he makes his entrance a few seconds in. What a fabulously entertaining work this is, but don’t search for profundity. The sardonic edge that’s found in several early Britten works is never far away, but there’s so much wit and energy, and there are several moments where Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Anniversary years are essential to classical music, shaking up our regular rhythms of programming and listening every year with new emphasis and new discoveries. While Britten, Wagner and Verdi have all had their moments in 2013, it is Witold Lutosławski who may yet emerge as the unlikely hero. Last night his exquisitely stark Cello Concerto held its own against a major Adès premiere, itself written in memory of the elder composer – surely one of the 20th century’s neglected greats.The Cello Concerto isn’t folk-charming like the Concerto for Orchestra or sensuously appealing like the Third Read more ...
David Nice
As good old Catullus put it, I hate and love, you may ask why. No doubt it's my job as a critic to probe such difficult responses to Britten's Canticles. Why am I so repelled by the sickly-sweet lullaby Isaac sings just before daddy's about to put him to the sword in Canticle II, then so haunted by the sombre war requiem of Britten's Edith Sitwell setting, Canticle III? Ambivalence about Ian Bostridge's weird dominating presence and Neil Bartlett's marshalling of five responses to the five very different narratives doesn't make it any easier. Then again, there's no reason why anything should Read more ...
David Nice
"Britten or Poulenc?" The question may seem a fatuous one, geared to the 100th anniversary of the Englishman's birth and 50 years since the Frenchman's death. Yet it certainly livens up what would otherwise be the usual dreary artists' biographies, presented with typical elan in this year's Cheltenham Music Festival programme book. "Has anyone said Poulenc in response to this?" asks pianist James Rhodes. Well, yes - no less than 13 of the performers, including doyenne of both composers Felicity Lott, as against 21 for Britten, with six "I couldn't possibly chooses" in the middle.Festival Read more ...
graham.rickson
Britten and Shostakovich: Violin Concertos James Ehnes (violin), Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kirill Karabits (Onyx)No apologies for reviewing yet another Britten disc. This one couples the Violin Concerto with Shostakovich’s Concerto no.1; a pairing which makes such emotional and musical sense that you’re surprised it’s not been done more often. Everything hits the mark here. The incisive, virtuosic orchestral backing from Kirill Karabits' Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is a perfect foil for James Ehnes’ jaw-dropping solo playing. The Britten has never opened with such cool poise; a Read more ...