Britten
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 ...
David Nice
Britten’s coronation opera, paying homage less to our own ambiguous queen than to the private-public tapestries of Verdi’s Aida and Don Carlo, is not the rarity publicity would have you believe, at least in its homeland. English National Opera successfully rehabilitated it in the 1980s, with Sarah Walker resplendent as regent. Phyllida Lloyd’s much revived Opera North production gave Josephine Barstow the role of a lifetime, enshrined in an amazing if selective film. The real questions, then, were why choosy visionary Richard Jones agreed to stage Gloriana, and whether he would have fun at Read more ...
Roderic Dunnett
In Britten’s centenary the Aldeburgh Festival has come up with two mesmerising opera happenings. The innovation is to stage Peter Grimes on the town’s beach, a few hundred yards from the composer’s beachside Aldeburgh first home, amid a splurge of decaying fishing boats. The daring recreation is to present all three of his orchestrally bewitching 1960s Church Parables in their original setting, Orford Church, where Peter Pears famously created three roles: the distraught Madwoman in Curlew River, haughty Nebuchadnezzar in The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Tempter in The Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
First things first. There are limited tickets still available for this run of Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh beach but there won’t be for long, so move fast. You can read the rest of this review later; the next few minutes could make the difference between experiencing one of the most memorable performances of your life and just finding out what you’ve missed out on.In Britten’s centenary year, the Aldeburgh Festival wanted to do something a bit special with Grimes, so they set themselves a logistical mountain to climb, booked Tim Albery to direct, and proceeded to Read more ...
David Nice
How often should a music-lover go to hear Britten’s most layered masterpiece? From personal experience, I’d say not more than once every five years, if you want to keep a sense of occasion fresh. So how often should an orchestra play it? Sir Simon Rattle and his Berlin Philharmonic decided they could manage three nights in a row towards the end of their 2013-14 season. At the first of the performances, it already felt like a lot might have been kept in check. This, alas, was for the most part the kind of workaday performance Shostakovich, who rated the work alongside Mahler’s Das Lied Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Austere, beautiful, heartbreaking, streaked with genius - that goes for both Benjamin Britten’s last opera Death in Venice and Deborah Warner’s remarkable production of it for ENO, returning all too briefly to the Coliseum, with a superb central performance. Besiege the box office for one of the four remaining performances if you want to see contemporary operatic art refined to its most personal and powerful.The story is well-known from Thomas Mann’s novella and Luchino Visconti’s classic film: the downfall of a mature novelist who visits Venice to break his writer’s block, and there falls in Read more ...
graham.rickson
Britten: Still falls the Rain, The Heart of the matter, Canticle V etc Nicholas Phan (tenor), Myra Huang (piano), Jennifer Montone (horn) Sivan Magen (harp) (Avie)Another well-planned Britten anthology in the composer’s centenary year, made more interesting by its choice of performers – none British, apart from an unexpected, eloquent spoken cameo from Alan Cumming in The Heart of the Matter. Heard here in Peter Pears’ abbreviated version, the song sequence has at its centre Britten’s Canticle III, surrounded by additional Edith Sitwell settings and readings and framed by a haunting prologue Read more ...
edward.seckerson
In Bergen’s Grieg Hall (one is tempted to say the Hall of the Mountain King) the 2013 Bergen Festival concludes with the mournful tolling of bells. A consonant “Amen”, like a healing benediction, is the last word and with it comes perhaps a glimmer of hope. But the mood is sombre not celebratory. Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, for all its theatricality, would be an unlikely choice to close a festival in any year but this - Britten's hundredth anniversary. Its effect on an audience has been tried and tested the world over and those who have vilified it (they still do) for being overly emotive Read more ...
graham.rickson
Staging Britten’s third opera in the round in a small performance space of the Howard Assembly Room makes complete sense. Albert Herring’s supporting cast of village grotesques are that little bit more oppressive when they’re singing yards away from your face. The effect is nicely claustrophobic too – after this, you somehow can’t imagine seeing this opera in a conventionally-sized opera house. And it means the audience get close to the great Dame Josephine Barstow, who as Lady Billows will be a draw for many. She’s still marvellous – you fear early on that her larger-than-life theatrics will Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
The Barbican Hall’s house lights faded to black, with just the soft glow of music stand lamps on stage as the Britten Sinfonia filed on and eased into the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Directed from leader’s desk by Jacqueline Shave, the orchestra gave an exquisite account of the piece, the chamber aesthetic and necessary communication between players somehow helping to draw the audience in. It was certainly a rewarding alternative to the lusher – and slushier – version one would hear from a full symphony orchestra’s worth of strings.It was a nice theatrical touch to begin the Read more ...