A clip from each of the six pieces, performed by oboist Sarah Francis. With thanks to Hyperion.
1 Pan
2 Phaeton
3 Niobe
4 Bacchus
5 Narcissus
6 Arethusa
Background and Critical Reception
It is no exaggeration to say that Britten was writing ‘outdoor music’ as the 1940s turned into the 1950s. With the Flower Songs having received their first performance ‘al fresco’, it was time for some instrumental music to experience the same phenomenon, and this collection of six pieces for solo oboe were first performed by Joy Boughton (daughter of the composer Rutland Boughton) at the Meare, Thorpeness, as part of the 1951 Aldeburgh Festival.
Works for solo oboe are still relatively rare today, but these pieces helped transform the repertoire and perception of the instrument. Although Britten had already written some accomplished pieces for oboe and other forces (the Phantasy Quartet Op.2, the Two Insect Pieces and the Temporal Variations) these pieces confirmed his absolute understanding of the instrument.
Eric Roseberry, writing booklet notes for Hyperion’s disc of Britten oboe and piano works, describes the Metamorphoses. ‘Like pieces of statuary in some classically conceived garden, these perfect miniatures capture the spirit of Ancient Greece with playfulness, humour, compassion and tenderness. The sly languor of Pan, the ill-advised daring of Phaeton, the sad immobility of Niobe, the tipsy revelries of Bacchus and his troop of boys, Narcissus contemplating his own image, the tumbling fountain of Arethusa – all are caught in a perfectly conceived outdoor music that must have yielded pure enchantment at its first performance over the waters on that June afternoon’.
Thoughts
The Six Metamorphoses after Ovid are extremely good pieces to experience live in concert, and I have had the pleasure of two performances previously, from Nicholas Daniel and from François Leleux.
Both emphasised the wide-open sounds of the piece, with Britten enjoying writing lyrically, mischievously or slightly sadly. For these pieces are very distinct in mood, responding as they are to the different mythological figures.
The cascading figuration of Arethusa‘s fountain is lovely, as is the darting figuration of Phaeton as he streaks across the sky, the finish an effective throwaway as he disappears. The contemplation of Narcissus is thoughtful, but I was sure towards the end of Arethusa that I could detect a parallel with the Sixth Cello Suite of Bach – probably not intentional but the two pieces share a key and the brilliance of the treble range.
Britten gives his music a great sense of freedom here, enjoying the wide range of colour and phrasing the oboe has to offer – indeed, Pan is close to a saxophone in its richness. I’d wager this will surprise a number of people who may have pigeonholed the instrument as a harbinger of sadness, as TV detective dramas love to paint it!
Recordings used
George Caird, Joy Boughton and Nicholas Daniel (Oboe Classics)
Janet Craxton (Decca)
Sarah Francis (Hyperion)
François Leleux (Harmonia Mundi)
Oboe students will certainly want the package on Oboe Classics. Masterminded by George Caird, it is an exceptional educational tool that comes complete with a comprehensive analysis by the author, who also performs early manuscript versions. In addition there are complete accounts of the six pieces by Joy Boughton, the dedicatee, and Nicholas Daniel, who will be talking in an interview with this blog about the works very soon.
I also focused on two other recordings, an early one from Janet Craxton and a digital version from Sarah Francis. The tone on Craxton’s analogue recording is extremely good, and her playing is sublime, in particular the gradual ‘accelerando’ that she employs at the end of the sixth piece. Francis has more depth to her sound and is a little more languid in the slow music, again securing a gorgeous tone.
Spotify
This playlist includes a number of versions of the Metamorphoses, including the package available on Oboe Classics.
Also written in 1951: Elliott Carter – String Quartet no.1
Next up: I take no pleasure in the sun’s bright beams
Loch Etive, Argyllshire by George Vincent. Photo (c) The Fitzwilliam Museum
Ca’ The Yowes (Folksong Arrangements, Volume 5 no.5 (British Isles)) – folksong arrangement for high or medium voice and piano (pre 9 April 1951, Britten aged 37)
Dedication Not known
Text Robert Burns
Language English
Duration 4’30”
Audio clips (with thanks to Decca and Hyperion)
Ca’ The Yowes (Peter Pears (tenor), Benjamin Britten (piano))
Ca’ The Yowes (Lorna Anderson (soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano))
Background and Critical Reception
The order of publication of Britten’s folksong arrangements do not necessarily correspond with the order of composition – a trait which can indeed be applied to the rest of his output. And so it is that while we have been listening more recently to the third volume of the arrangements, suddenly we jump ahead to the fifth, and one of his most popular interpretations.
The wonderful Burns Country website talks through the history of the song, with text by Robert Burns that seems to be even earlier in origin.
In his booklet notes for Hyperion, Lewis Foreman talks about the ‘economy of gesture’ that is striking in the later folksong arrangements, and this song is something of an example.
Thoughts
A very solemn and grand song, Ca’ the yowes can give the singer real presence in a recital – but equally it can expose a lack of depth, especially if the singer falls victim to the temptation of opting for sheer volume at the expense of genuine expression.
Like several of Britten’s Scottish settings, it is a song of breadth, the majestic melody given an equally extravagant set of spread piano chords to accompany it. Because of its range it has proved as easy for mezzo-sopranos to sing as tenors or baritones, and because it crosses the ranges so effectively it is often heard in recital.
It is also rather moving, especially in the final declarations of love, as ‘thou hast stol’n my very heart; I can die but canna part, My bonnie dearie’.
Recordings used
Peter Pears (tenor), Benjamin Britten (piano) (Decca)
Felicity Lott (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano) (Naxos)
Lorna Anderson (soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano) (Hyperion)
Robert Tear (tenor), Sir Philip Ledger (piano) (EMI)
Mark Stone (tenor), David Owen Norris (piano) (Naxos)
Roderick Williams (baritone), Iain Burnside (piano (Naxos)
Pears and Britten judge this slow burning song to perfection, setting a stately pace the whole way through, the words extremely clear but the harmonies rich and even. Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson are a lot faster – a whole minute and a half so – but Lott’s phrasing means that does not matter, especially in the breathtaking notes that she reaches in the final verse.
Mark Stone is a little more nasal in tone but notable for clarity also, while Robert Tear and Sir Philip Ledger give a majestic performance. Meanwhile Roderick Williams shows how well this song transcribes for the richness of the baritone voice – and Lorna Anderson likewise for the slightly shriller tones of the soprano.
Spotify
Pears & Britten’s recording for Decca can be heard here, while Mark Wilde & David Owen Norris are here. Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson show how the song works equally well with soprano voice here, while baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Iain Burnside are here.
Hen harrier (c) Graham Catley, whose rather wonderful blog Pewit can be found here
Lachrymae: Reflections on a song of John Dowland op. 48 for viola and piano (16 May 1950, Britten aged 36)
Dedication William Primrose
Duration 13′
Audio clips
Dowland’s song If my complaints could passions move, performed by Mark Padmore and Elizabeth Kenny. With thanks to Hyperion:
Background and Critical Reception
While working on Billy Budd, Britten returned to his first instrument. This time he had not himself but the Scottish viola player William Primrose in mind, and Lachrymae was performed by Primrose and Britten at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1950.
Nowadays it is hardly ever heard or recorded in its initial version for viola and piano, superseded by the composer’s arrangement for viola and string orchestra in 1976.
Writing in his booklet notes for Lawrence Power’s Hyperion recording of the orchestral version, Mervyn Cooke calls the work ‘a satisfying synthesis of various musical elements carrying a strong personal significance for the composer’. He cites these as the writing for Britten’s own instrument, the viola, and his deliberate homage once again to English musical heritage. This time the subject is not Purcell, but the celebrated John Dowland song If my complaints could passions move, published in the First Booke of Songes or Ayres in 1597. Britten also refers to a second Dowland song, Flow my tears, in the course of the piece.
It is once again to the theme and variations form that Britten turns, for he could work within this framework with great fluency. Yet rather than use the conventional order of stating the theme first, he works the variations out beforehand and finishes with the theme itself. This became a feature of some of Britten’s theme and variations movements – his later Nocturnal for guitar and Cello Suite no.3 operate in that way.
Cooke talks of how Dowland’s theme has a ‘strong rising and falling shape which makes Britten’s transformations of it readily comprehensible to the listener’.
Thoughts
This ghostly piece is one of the most serious of Britten’s chamber music utterances. He brings from the viola a range of sounds that show off the instrument’s silvery sound, and from the off, when the piano’s left hand solemnly intones Downland’s theme like a chant, the viola is hovering above, its double stopped notes taking on the profile of a restless bird.
Some of the slower writing – particularly in this viola and piano version – points not towards future English music but to the colours used by Eastern European composers such as Gubaidulina, Górecki and Arvo Pärt. The sudden outburst from the piano in left hand octaves which begins the sixth reflection (Appassionato) is proof positive of this, as is the eerie sound of the cold right hand of the piano slowly chiming with the harmonics of the viola in the tenth reflection, marked Lento .
Here the to and fro between the two instruments is spooky, with no comfort to be found, especially when the urgent tremolos of the penultimate section (L’istesso tempo) begin. But then there is a sense of release and Dowland’s theme is heard in full, the piece reaching a resolution that would never have been possible had Britten begun with the theme itself. In that sense Lachrymae, as well as being a profoundly emotional utterance, becomes a masterly reinterpretation of a very familiar form.
Recordings used
Krzysztof Chorzelski (viola), Katya Apekisheva (piano) (Champs Hill)
The neglect of Britten’s earlier version for viola and piano is almost total, which is something of a shame. However the one readily available version, part of a disc from Krzysztof Chorzelski and Katya Apekisheva that includes works for viola and piano by Schumann and Shostakovich, is a passionate performance.
Five Flower Songs, Op.47 for unaccompanied chorus (SATB) (April 1950, Britten aged 36)
1 To Daffodils (Robert Herrick)
2 The Succession of the Four Sweet Months (Robert Herrick)
3 Marsh Flowers (George Crabbe)
4 The Evening Primrose (John Clare)
5 Ballad of Green Broom (Anon)
Dedication To Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst on the occasion of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary – 3rd April 1950
Text Various, as above
Language English
Duration 10′
Audio clips – taken from the recording made by Polyphony under Stephen Layton. With thanks to Hyperion Records.
1 To Daffodils
2 The Succession of the Four Sweet Months
3 Marsh Flowers
4 The Evening Primrose
5 Ballad of Green Broom
Background and Critical Reception
Having completed A Wedding Anthem for a pair of newly-weds, Britten now turned his attention to a Silver Wedding couple, writing the Five Flower Songs as a present for Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst of Dartington Hall. The couple were keen gardeners, and had generously contributed to the funding of the English Opera Group for its establishment in 1947.
Britten’s five songs were carefully selected using his by-now considerable knowledge of English poetry, and include at their centre a setting of George Crabbe’s poem Marsh Flowers, Britten’s first use of his text since Peter Grimes. The first performance of the Flower Songs, conducted by Imogen Holst, was rather appropriately given outside at Dartington, with the couple present.
In his Britten Choral Guide for Boosey & Hawkes, Paul Spicer describes the Flower Songs as ‘lovely, classic part-songs…which, while in a direct line of descent from the classic part-songs of Elgar, Stanford and Parry, are entirely original’. He also talks of how ‘the mood-scape shows that Britten was keenly aware of the variety needed to satisfy performers and audience between bookends’.
For the final song, Green Broom, Spicer describes how ‘the gradual accelerando throughout this piece leading to the final flourish makes this a wonderful and exciting finale to a set of part-songs which should be at the heart of any choir’s repertoire’.
Thoughts
Britten’s writing for unaccompanied choir continues to be a delight, and these open-air songs have all the spring-like charm their title promises.
Once again the text is the star, the composer’s ability to choose from a variety of sources vindicated in a quintet of songs that vary considerably in mood.
To daffodils is serenity itself, while the following song, The succession of the four sweet months, is a self-contained mini-suite of songs, moving from April to July by way of some clever harmonic placement.
The cloud on the horizon is Crabbe’s Marsh flowers, talking of how the ‘dull nightshade hangs her deadly fruit’ – a timely reminder that nature is cruel at times – and moving to a more threatening tone when singing of ‘the fiery nettle…fierce with poison’d stings’. The upward curve for the chorus here records the surprise of such a sting.
Britten’s setting of The evening primrose recalls the purity of the Hymn to St Cecilia, a chaste setting that has clear and consonant harmonies. Meanwhile The ballad of green Broom is the most substantial song, growing in presence as it tells the story, before the end throws open the doors with a great gust of air.
Each of the five songs here is a delightful miniature, but when heard together the Flower Songs make a very satisfying quintet, expertly crafted in light and shade, and exquisitely written for the voices.
Recordings used
Elizabethan Singers / Louis Halsey (Eloquence)
The Sixteen / Harry Christophers (Coro)
Polyphony / Stephen Layton (Hyperion)
Monteverdi Choir / Sir John Eliot Gardiner (Deutsche Grammophon)
Finzi Singers / Paul Spicer (Chandos)
The Elizabethan Singers are the ones who sound as if they are performing outside in the meadow, with an open quality to their singing that is naturally achieved.
John Eliot Gardiner opts for clarity, and because of the recording quality from DG the text can be very easily heard. Likewise with Paul Spicer and the Finzi Singers, whose forces are a little smaller in scale but find greater delicacy because of that.
Harry Christophers operates at quite a fast tempo for To daffodils, and doesn’t pause much between phrases, with the result that some of the text is less easy to decipher, and Britten’s music is more agitated than serene.
To me Stephen Layton seems to bring all that is good about these songs together, helped by a sympathetic recorded sound that helps emphasise the outdoorsy feel of the songs. The singing is superb, as it is elsewhere on a disc that contains A.M.D.G. and Sacred and Profane among other Britten works.
Spotify
This playlistincludes three versions of the Flower Songs – the versions from Harry Christophers and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, as mentioned above, and an older recording with the Netherlands Chamber Choir conducted by John Alldis.
Also written in 1950: Arnold – English Dances Set 1, Op.27
The cover of the only available recording of Stratton, as released on Pearl.
Stratton – Incidental music (pre 31 October 1949, Britten aged 35)
Text Ronald Duncan
Duration unknown
Audio clips
Clips from the only known recording of Stratton can be heard over at the Allmusic website
Background and Critical Reception
Britten collaborated with Ronald Duncan once again for his very last piece of incidental music, of which very little is known. The score is lost, so the forces for which Stratton was composed are not known – but one recording remains. Conducted by Britten himself, it is described by the issuing record label, Pearl, as ‘thirteen pieces without title, running continuously’.
In his booklet note for the recording, Paul Campion notes the work was premiered at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, in October 1949. ‘It was not a critical success’, he recounts. ‘It is a tragic story. He (Duncan) takes the family of the Strattons and shows what happens when the father, a judge – Clive Brook – murders his son and makes love to his daughter-in-law’.
This plot indicates a parallel work to The Rape of Lucretia, with tragedy at the forefront. Britten’s score, says Campion, has ‘sombre music to underline the more morbid passages’. John Bridcut includes it in his Essential Britten publication, describing the score as ‘having an almost relentlessly grim tread, to match the dark nature of the play’.
The recording is made available thanks to the Earl of Harewood, who offered his set of pressings for Britten’s own recording and these were taken up by Pearl.
Thoughts
As Bridcut notes, this is a score of almost unremitting darkness. The slow, ominous tread of the bass drum and timpani as they support twisted woodwind and horn lines in the opening number is a sign of things to come, an indication that the music of Shostakovich and Mahler is currently to the forefront of Britten’s mind.
It doesn’t help that the only recording of the piece is so constricted aurally, as the claustrophobia of the music is evident at all times. The instrumental group is quite a small one, paving the way for Britten’s use of the chamber orchestra some years later with the War Requiem.
Stratton is in effect a permanent funeral march, though it does occasionally break from the mould. The eighth number hurtles along, a rather macabre moto perpetuo that recalls some of the instrumental writing in The Rape of Lucretia though it feels like an accident waiting to happen. Sure enough, it crashes into something of a brick wall, before the funeral march returns with ever greater certainty in the tenth number. There is a sweet but devastatingly desolate violin solo in the closing pages.
At times I was anticipating a vocal soloist, especially as the first number wound towards its conclusion, but was almost relieved that one did not appear, as it would only bring tales of further heaviness and woe. There is enough downward looking music here already!
Recordings used
English Opera Group Orchestra / Benjamin Britten (Pearl)
This recording is currently deleted, which is a shame – more so as it is twinned with a very early recording of The Rape of Lucretia, with Kathleen Ferrier in the title role. However after a long wait I have got hold of a copy, and despite the grainy sound quality it is a dramatic score. Britten conducts the English Opera Group Orchestra, sparse and lean in their sound, and heavy at the bass end – which only heightens the dread of the funeral march episodes.
Spotify
Unsurprisingly, Stratton is not on Spotify.
Also written in 1949: Kabalevsky – Cello Concerto no.1 in G minor, Op.77
Sunlight through the window of Wimborne Minster (c) Ben Hogwood
A Wedding Anthem (Amo Ergo Sum), Op.46 for soprano and tenor solos, chorus (SATB) and organ (September 1949, Britten aged 35)
Dedication Written for the wedding of Lord Harewood and Marion Stein
Text Ronald Duncan
Language English and Latin
Duration 6′
Background and Critical Reception
Lord Harewood, nephew of King George V, announced his engagement to the concert pianist Marion Stein in 1949. On hearing the news, Britten asked Ronald Duncan to write the words for a wedding anthem.
It seems the two were both fans of Britten’s music, for as Humphrey Carpenter writes, William Walton told his wife of how ‘Marion Stein and George Harewood were both admirer’s of Britten’s music, and were marrying each other because of this bond’.
Carpenter talks of how Britten acted as counsellor to Marion in the weeks before the engagement was made public, and also reveals that the score for the anthem was buried as a keepsake in the foundations of the Royal Festival Hall, which was being built at the time.
Although Ronald Duncan, the librettist for The Rape of Lucretia, was no longer working with Britten on a regular basis the two were still friends, and collaborated on Britten’s final piece of incidental music, Stratton. A Wedding Anthem, one of their last collaborations, was duly performed at the wedding in St Mark’s Church, North Audley Street, London on 29 September 1949.
Perhaps surprisingly, the work appears to have only been recorded a handful of times since, suggesting it was intended for private performance only.
Thoughts
The influence of Purcell can now clearly be heard in Britten’s church music, too – and the organ flourish with which this attractive anthem begins is straight out of Britten’s realizations of his music.
There is a sense of joy in the peals of ‘Ave maria’ that are passed between the four parts in the opening section, before the music becomes more contemplative. Duncan’s text here is of a more flowery nature, talking of how ‘As mountain streams find one another till they are both merged’. Here there are solos for soprano and tenor, following a little the structural profile of Rejoice in the Lamb.
The serene coda is particularly beautiful, one of the calmest passages in all Britten so far, eventually resolving in a rareified B major as the Latin text is intoned.
Recordings used
Choir of New College Oxford / Edward Higginbottom, Steven Grahl (organ) (Novum)
The Sixteen / Harry Christophers, Margaret Phillips (organ) (Coro)
Finzi Singers / Paul Spicer, Andrew Lumsden (organ)
The new recording from Edward Higginbottom and New College Oxford gets right to the spirit of the wedding service, with a sense of rapture observed within the confines of the church. The Finzi Singers are much more expansive, their rendition almost two minutes longer and with some extra vibrato in the soprano part. Vibrato, too, is a feature of The Sixteen in their recording, with less of a sense of the virginal purity that Higginbottom secures.
Spotify
The following playlist groups together all three versions listed above, as well as an older version with the BBC Choral Society conducted by George Thalben-Ball.
Also written in 1949: Prokofiev – Cello Sonata in C major, Op.119
Spring Symphony, Op.44 for soprano, contralto and tenor soloists, chorus, boys’ choir and orchestra (October 1948 – June 1949, Britten aged 35)
Part 1
Introduction (Anon, 16th century)
The merry cuckoo (Edmund Spenser)
Spring (Thomas Nashe)
The driving boy (George Peel / John Clare)
The morning star (John Milton)
Part 2
Welcome, maids of honour (Robert Herrick)
Waters above (Henry Vaughan)
Out on the lawn (W.H. Auden)
Part 3
When will my May come (Richard Barnfield)
Fair and fair (George Peele)
Sound the flute (William Blake)
Part 4
Finale: London, to thee I do present ((Francis Beaumont / John Fletcher)
Dedication Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Text as above
Language English
Duration 45′
Audio clips
Taken from the premiere recording, with Jennifer Vyvyan (soprano), Norma Proctor (contralto), Peter Pears (tenor), Emanuel School Wandsworth Boys’ Choir and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Benjamin Britten. With thanks to Decca
Part 1
1. Introduction
2. The merry cuckoo
3. Spring
4. The driving boy
5. The morning star
Part 2
6. Welcome, maids of honour (Robert Herrick)
7. Waters above
8. Out on the lawn
Part 3
9. When will my May come
10. Fair and fair
11. Sound the flute
Part 4
12. Finale: London, to thee I do present
Background and Critical Reception
Britten’s endless outpouring of vocal music seemed like it was never going to stop in the late 1940s, and even when he was writing a symphony the voice was still its dominant feature.
There is a lot of scholarly debate as to whether this really is a proper symphony, but as Michael Kennedy points out in his booklet note for Britten’s own recording on Decca, it follows in the tradition of choral symphonies from Vaughan Williams and Holst, while taking more influence from the Mahler symphonies in which voices were used.
The Spring Symphony was commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and began with a rather different concept. When Britten wrote to the conductor, he said, ‘I am planning it for chorus and soloists, as I think you wanted; but it is a real symphony (the emphasis is on the orchestra) and consequently I am using Latin words’.
Things changed, as Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of the composer details. ‘Both Eric Crozier and Elizabeth Sweeting believe that the Spring Symphony owes its existence to a particular Suffolk landscape, ‘somewhere between Snape and Ufford’, writes Crozier. According to Sweeting, Britten visited this spot on a picnic with her, his housekeeper and Pears. It was ‘a glorious spring day, one of those that seem to be out of time; and she believes that this experience crystallized his love of the Suffolk countryside.’
The work actually enjoyed its first performance in the Netherlands, where, with Koussevitsky’s blessing, Eduard van Beinum conducted the first performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on 14 July 1949. A little Latin remained, Britten including the ancient song Sumer is icumen in in the work’s climactic final pages.
Britten says this is ‘a symphony not only dealing with the Spring itself, but with the progress of Winter to Spring and the reawakening of the earth and life which that means’. Carpenter maintains that ‘sweetness is the work’s predominant character – most of the poems are in the pastoral tradition – and it is much to Britten’s credit that the music never becomes cloying. This is largely due to the orchestration. Coming to it from the exigencies of the English Opera Group chamber ensemble, Britten treats the full-size symphony orchestra of the Spring Symphony (triple woodwind, four percussionists and two harps) as a palette from which he selects only a few colours at a time, with stunning results.’
He concludes by saying, ‘The Spring Symphony is a Serenade without the Invisible Worm.’
Thoughts
The Spring Symphony invites its listener to throw open the windows and take in the fresh air. This is very much a celebratory work, moving from cold to warm and from darkness to light – from barren to fertile, if you like.
Britten uses his performing means with great economy, although sometimes it does feel like there are just too many toys for him to play with. Three vocal soloists, two choirs and a large orchestra is a lot to be dealing with, and it must be a bit odd in performance to see just the tenor soloist and three trumpets engaged in a three minute fanfare in front of the massed throng. Yet perhaps this is where the influence of Mahler is at its height, the ability to make what is effectively chamber music in the middle of a huge assembled throng of performers.
I found this symphony a lot of fun after a few listens, and a lot happens in its course. Somehow we negotiate twelve song settings in 45 minutes, covering approximately 700 years of English poetry by fourteen different authors, but the composer manages to pull some sense from this potentially scattergun approach.
The most affecting of the settings, and the work’s emotional centre, is the Auden setting, Out on the lawn I lie in bed, placed at the end of Part 2, which is in effect the slow movement. This alternates between the contralto soloist and the distant choir, rising to a poignant climax that briefly questions the war, before Britten returns to the theme of spring and new life.
There are some invigorating choruses here, too. The ostinato Spring, the sweet Spring sticks in the head a lot, while the final pages are a heady rush of sunshine. Meanwhile the juxtaposition of tenor and trumpets in The Merry Cuckoo is very striking. Perhaps the most vivid pictures of nature come with the introduction, a thawing of winter set to the anonymous poem Shine Out. The woodwind at about three minutes in, although they are meant to evoke a colder season, sound to me like the green shoots and buds made visible at last.
So much happens here that the Spring Symphony needs a good number of listens before all of its bounty can fully be harvested. It is Britten casting aside his inhibitions and celebrating, with a whole community, his land going through the process of becoming green and pleasant again.
Recordings used
Jennifer Vyvyan (soprano), Norma Proctor (contralto), Peter Pears (tenor), Emanuel School Wandsworth Boys’ Choir and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Benjamin Britten (Decca)
Sheila Armstrong (Soprano), Dame Janet Baker (mezzo-soprano), Robert Tear (tenor), St. Clement Danes Grammar School Boys’ Choir, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra / André Previn (EMI)
Elizabeth Gale (soprano), Alfredo Hodgson (contralto), Martyn Hill (tenor), City of London School Boys and Girls Choirs, Southend Boys’ Choir, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra / Richard Hickox (Chandos)
Nina Postavnicheva, Vladimir Mahov, Alexander Yakovenko, Grand Symphony Orchestra of Radio and Television & Chorus of Boys / Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (Russian Revelation)
Perhaps because of the forces required to perform it, the Spring Symphony is not a piece with a rich recorded history, but there are certainly some quirks among its discography. It is no surprise that this is led by the composer’s recording, full of the joys of spring, so to speak! Pears sings superbly in The Merry Cuckoo, in a memorable duet with the trumpets, while Norma Proctor brings deep emotion to Auden’s poem.
André Previn’s recording is deeply committed and boasts superb soloists in Sheila Armstrong, Dame Janet Baker and Robert Tear. His celesta is surprisingly loud and shimmers as an echo in the early climaxes, but the bluster of the cow horn in the finale and some heavy percussive blows mean the recording is great fun.
Some very lusty singing characterises Richard Hickox’s recording, with Martyn Hill a brightly voiced tenor soloist in The Merry Cuckoo. The choral singing is extremely impressive throughout.
The Spring Symphony is one of Britten’s best travelled works, and there are recordings both in Czech and in Russian. The former, in a performance conducted by Karel Ancerl and recently made available on Supraphon, is quite fierce at times, while the latter gets a raucous but vivid performance from Gennadi R and the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra, on the short-lived Russian Revelation label. His percussion is very forwards in the mix.
Spotify
This playlist brings together recorded versions of the Spring Symphony from Britten himself, Previn, Hickox and Gardiner.
Let’s Make An Opera – a picture of the production made by the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and artists for Arthaus. Photo credit not known
The Little Sweep the opera from Let’s make an opera, an entertainment for young people, Op.45 (April – May 1949, Britten aged 34)
Dedication Affectionately dedicated to the real Gay, Juliet, Sophie, Tina, Hughie, Jonny and Sammy – the Gathorne-Hardys of Great Glemham, Suffolk
Text Eric Crozier
Language English
Duration 45′
Audio clips
Clips from the first recording of The Little Sweep, with Peter Pears and David Hemmings, and the English Opera Group Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Britten. With thanks to Decca.
1. Sweep! Sweep!
2. Sweep this chimney
3.Now, little white boy!
4. Pull the rope gently until he is free!
5. Is he wounded?
6. Sooty tracks
7. Run, poor sweep-boy
8. The kettles are singing
9. O why do you weep
10. Ah!…Blackguards!
11. Help! Help! She’s collapsed!
12. The owl, wide-winging through the sky
13. Soon the coach will carry you away
14. Morning, Sammy! Lovely weather
15. Ready, Alfred?
16. Coaching song: The horses are champing
Background and Critical Reception
Neil Powell’s biography of Britten perceptively looks at the background behind this, the composer’s first opera for children. He speaks of how Britten’s ‘implicit hope that a return to the east coast might enable him to recapture some of his childhood joys and innocence hadn’t been fully realised.
So he turned to the next best thing: writing a work for actual children which would be both socially useful and emotionally therapeutic. This was Let’s make an Opera!, a sort of do-it-yourself kit for the English Opera Group to stage at the 1949 Aldeburgh Festival: it would comprise a short, musically illustrated play about the writing and rehearsal of the piece, followed by a performance of a one-act opera, The Little Sweep.’
The libretto for this came, once again, from Eric Crozier, who wrote the substantial act that shows the children planning and rehearsing for the first performance. As Britten said, ‘The cast consists of five professional singers and six children, and the audience constitutes the chorus (a neat device for saving money, don’t you think?) I have left myself ten days for composing this, but I do not anticipate any difficulties arising’.
Such was Britten’s confidence in his powers of invention – and why not, given the prodigious rate of composition on The Rape of Lucretia, Albert Herring and The Beggar’s Opera? The work was finished in three weeks – and as Powell once again says, he enjoyed the freedom from the ’emotional baggage’ that went with writing for Peter Pears.
Imogen Holst wrote a chapter on the opera itself for The Britten Symposium in 1952, updated as part of The Britten Companion. In it she says that ‘By the time the curtain goes up there is no longer any dividing line between audience and performer or between amateur and professional, so there need be no fear of any self-consciousness, either on or off the stage. And as the story begins to unfold, one realizes that there is no dividing line in Britten, whether he writes a tragic opera for grown-ups or a light-hearted entertainment for children.’
As for the music itself, she praises Britten’s powers of musical description. ‘Five bars are enough to convey the desolation of the sweep as Sammy (the sweep) is left alone in the narrow chimney, with his rope dangling in the fireplace of the empty nursery.’
And so progresses the story, whereby the new sweep Sammy is forced into a chimney by the head sweeps of Iken Hall, the whiter than white boy made completely black in the process. He is however rescued by other children, who hear his pleas not to be sent up the chimney again. They plan to smuggle him out of the house in a suitcase, but face a number of obstacles, not least the housekeeper Miss Baggot, before they can get him clear. Eventually they are successful, and Sammy is free. For Humphrey Carpenter, this ‘puts the theme of lost innocence into reverse’, and even Hans Keller first referred to it as ‘a children’s Grimes’.
The audience songs were an innovation of the time. Writing in The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, Stephen Arthur Allen notes how ‘Each of the four ‘audience songs’ – equivalents to the interludes of Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia are themselves subtle parables (inspired perhaps by the success of the hymns in Saint Nicolas), permitting the audience to participate in or comment on the drama. He goes on to describe it as ‘a kind of Young Person’s Guide to the Opera. Michael Kennedy says that ‘In this work is crystallized all that we understand by Britten’s capacity for writing for children without patronizing them.’
Thoughts
Britten loved audience participation, because for him the function of his music was to involve the community – and Let’s make an Opera was the best possible vehicle to do that, giving something back to the Suffolk that had made him feel so welcome on his return from America.
Perhaps even more so than The Beggar’s Opera, the work is completely ‘of its time’, so it foes feel rather out of place 65 or so years on. The language of Crozier’s libretto has dated very well, but there is the matter of some non-too subtle racial references (‘don’t send the white boy up the chimney’) that were more common in the late 1940s but which would be frowned upon today. The musical language – it is for kids, after all! – is incredibly twee at times, more so in the play that surrounds the opera. But, as Michael Kennedy says, there is nothing patronizing at all, and if anything it is the adults who are seen as an inconvenience.
Once The Little Sweep itself begins, the music moves up a gear, and the opening chorus of ‘Swe-eee-eeep!’ is brilliantly done. Britten is one of very few composers who could achieve such a catchy melody in a time signature of 5/4; he did it time and time again throughout his career. It is clear he is having a lot of fun in the music, no more so than when the children are rushing to hide from the housekeeping staff, an extravagant ‘moto perpetuo’. There are enough musical jokes to keep the audience amused as well as the children, and in any case they have to busy themselves with the four choruses.
These are really well written, the second (Sammy’s Bath Song) an ‘ingratiating waltz’’, to borrow Michael Oliver’s term, and the third an enjoyable and slightly mad bit of night music where all the birds – owls, herons, doves and chaffinches – are evoked.
There are also some surprisingly moving passages. As Sammy implores ‘please don’t send me up again!’ there is a genuine feeling of panic, while the final chorus really does feel like a release from captivity, the music now in D major rather than the minor key in which it began.
I found the play itself much too long and overfull of ‘humourous’ accidents and pranks, very much in the vein of a younger Last of the Summer Wine. But again, it is of its time – and has a certain charm. It means that when the opera itself arrives the attention is more easily captured.
The opera is something of an acquired taste, and is not something I would necessarily choose to watch, the result being that I found I respected it rather than loved it. I wonder what a ten-year old would think now?
Recordings used
DVD
Let’s make an opera: An Opera Feature Film by Petr Weigl (1996)
Felicity Palmer, Kate Flowers, Stephen Richardson, John Graham Hall, Lisa Milne, Nettle & Markham (pianos), The Coull Quartet, City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and Symphony Youth Chorus / Simon Halsey (Arthaus)
CD
April Cantelo, Jennifer Vyvyan, David Hemmings, Nancy Thomas, Peter Pears, Choir Of Alleyn’s School, English Opera Orchestra / Benjamin Britten (Decca)
Catherine Benson, Mary Wells, Sam Monck, Heather Begg, Robert Tear, Robert Lloyd, Choir of King’s College Cambridge, Finchley Children’s Music Group / Sir Philip Ledger (EMI)
Britten’s 1956 recording for Decca is very close-up, but the effects of the sweep boy being stuck in the chimney are brilliantly secured. In a sense that is effective, because chimneys are confined spaces after all! The pronunciations are very proper – so you can hear the words perfectly well but it sounds very posh. It is great to hear Britten’s dramatic acumen put to such vivid use, though, and you can see how well this would work for kids and adults alike.
Philip Ledger’s recording is also excellent, and has the benefit of better sound. The singing is particularly good, and there is a vibrancy and enthusiasm for the plot that runs through the recording. The last few numbers, and the final chorus, are particularly frothy.
Petr Weigl’s film is enjoyable, but probably best for those with younger minds than mine! I found the endless accidents of the first ten minutes rather wearing, and the separation of audio and video tracks was a problem too. Once the performance starts it is much more watchable.
Spotify
Britten’s version is temporarily unavailable on Spotify it seems; however the Philip Langridge version can be accessed here.
Also written in 1949: Vaughan Williams – The Pilgrim’s Progress
Painting of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, Act 5 by William Hogarth
The Beggar’s Opera, Op.43 – A ballad-opera by John Gay (1728) realized from the original airs (December 1947 – May 1948, Britten aged 34)
Dedication James Lawrie (Board member of the English Opera Group, chairman from 1950 – 1960
Text John Gay, edited and embellished by Tyrone Guthrie
Language English
Duration 110′
Audio and Video clips
The entire opera can be watched in this 1963 BBC TV broadcast, recently uploaded to YouTube. The cast includes Roger Jerome, David Kelly, Bernard Dickerson, Anna Pollak, Dame Janet Baker, Kenneth McKellar, Bryan Drake, Heather Harper and other members of the English Opera Group. The English Chamber Orchestra is conducted by Meredeth Davies.
Selected clips from the recording made by the City of London Sinfonia and Christian Curnyn for Chandos, with Thomas Randle and Susan Bickley, can be heard on Amazon.
Background and Critical Reception
‘Three operas at the rate of one a year – the cumulative total of their duration represents some 5 hours 49 minutes of continuous music according to the composer’s own timings! – is prodigality indeed.’
So writes Donald Mitchell, noting Britten’s extraordinary creativity in the years of 1946 to 1948, when the English Opera Group required not just his input as a composer, but with policy, administration, touring and conducting.
The Beggar’s Opera was the third of a ‘trilogy’, begun by The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring, where Britten collaborated with the artist John Piper (set design) and the writer Eric Crozier (libretto and stage direction) among many others. Yet his task with this opera was a little easier than the others, as he already had some source material with which to work.
John Gay may have written the libretto for The Beggar’s Opera, but he did not write the tunes. Instead he used popular songs of the day, creating what became known as a ‘ballad opera’.
Michael Kennedy, writing the booklet notes for the City of London Sinfonia’s recording on Chandos, explains how the opera contains twenty-eight traditional ballads or folksongs, twenty-three Irish, Scottish and French songs, and the rest drawn from Purcell, Handel and several other, making a total of sixty-nine. The overture was attributed to the composer baroque composer Pepusch, but for his version Britten wrote a new one.
Britten himself remarked that, ‘I feel that most previous arrangements have avoided their toughness and strangeness and have concentrated only on their lyrical prettiness’. With the help of Tyrone Guthrie he also turned his attention to Gay’s text, updating a little of it and reordering the principal character’s arrest from the end of the opera to the end of Act One.
In the opera, Mr and Mrs Peachum discover that one of his principal clients, the highwayman Macheath, has secretly married their daughter Polly. They resolve to kill him for his money, but he has disappeared. However Mr Peachum resorts to catch Macheath, a notorious womaniser, by means of a honey trap in a tavern. The mission is successful, and Macheath is captured – but escapes by seducing the jailer’s daughter and promising to marry her. However the jailer and Mr Peachum discover Macheath and resolve to have him hanged and split the profits.
Things get worse for Macheath, who is now suspected of impregnating four women, and he prepares to face the gallows. Yet because the audience demands a happy wedding (so says the narrator, the Beggar!) Macheath is reprieved and marries Polly.
The first performance was by the English Opera Group at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge, on 24 May 1948. The ensemble was essentially that used for The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring, with Peter Pears taking the part of Macheath – traditionally a baritone role – and Nancy Evans that of Polly Peachum.
Eric Roseberry, writing in The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, concludes that ‘not only is it a compendium of his folk/national song-arranging techniques, but it becomes a Britten opera in its own right through the composer’s more or less ‘free’ treatment of his material, combining, reshaping it into duets, ensembles, whole scenes and the provision where necessary of his own music – link passages, melodrama, introductions, codas and the like. For him, Britten dispenses with pastiche, though he is indebted to the example of neo-classical Stravinsky, as absorbed in The Rape of Lucretia.
The last word goes to Donald Mitchell again. ‘The Beggar’s Opera is not a ‘sport’ among Britten’s operas but an integral part of the totality of theatrical works, from Paul Bunyan to Death in Venice, that was his prodigiously rich legacy. As for the plot, are we surprised that Britten’s imagination was excited by it? After all Macheath is another of Britten’s doomed heroes, tormented by love, the victim of treachery, and only saved in the nick of time by the conventions of ‘opera’ coming to his rescue. It was a release Britten permitted none other of his tragic heroes to enjoy.’
Thoughts
The Beggar’s Opera does still sound incredibly dated, but that is more due to its libretto than its music – and in any case, it is as well to consider that most drama series on TV of late have been set in much older times – so in a sense it is not out of date at all.
Britten’s music helps. The overture gives an indication of what is in store, with some terrifically taut writing for the small instrumental group that he has now become accustomed to writing for. In the course of this short, concentrated curtain-lifter he offers profiles of all the characters. Unfortunately not too many of them are likeable!
There are many redeeming features, however. O Polly, you might have toyed… is a duet of real delicacy between Polly and her mother, while in the second act, Polly’s Cease your funning has a grace and lightness that would not be out of place in Offenbach, the music melting as the voices fade away.
It almost goes without saying that Britten harnesses his instrumental forces with considerable flair. The colouring as POlly sings ‘I love him, I cannot survive him’ in the first act, with tremolo on the flute and melted string chords, is one instance, the trills of the violin alongside Macheath singing ‘If the heart of a man is depressed with cares’ another. Then the dramatic timpani and bass strings glissandi, as Macheath is condemned to the gallows, is brilliantly done.
At the climax of the opera there is an effective appropriation of Greensleeves before the frenzied and surprisingly powerful finish given the meagre orchestral forces, turning at the last to a happy ending of sorts.
Yet the problem with the words themselves recurs. What doesn’t help hugely is the pacing. The long passages of spoken dialogue, while central to the plot, are quite unhelpful from a musical sense, and are better experienced visually, such as in the video clip above.
I also found the overuse of the words ‘slut’, ‘hussy’ and ‘wench’ distracting, for those words carry more objectionable meaning than they might have done in Gay’s time, and aren’t as humourous as they might be. Meanwhile some of the ‘fa la la’ passages as Mrs Trapes sings ‘In the days of my youth’ brought the images of David Walliams and Matt Lucas all too close to hand. Little Britten, perhaps?!
So I don’t think I will be returning to The Beggar’s Opera with great frequency or relish, for it feels very much like a document of its time. But it gave Britten yet more dramatic experience with the English Opera Group, and it further illustrates his ability to work within very specific performing means, a discipline he learned with the film scores. It would yield much more substantial results in future years.
Recordings used
CD
Philip Langridge (Macheath), Anne Collins (Mrs Peachum), Robert Lloyd (Peachum), Ann Murray (Polly Peachum), Chorus and Orchestra / Steuart Bedford (Decca)
Tom Randle (Macheath), Susan Bickley (Mrs Peachum), Jeremy White (Peachum), Leah-Marian Jones (Polly Peachum), Chorus and City of London Sinfonia / Christian Curnyn (Chandos)
Both these versions are excellent, aided by some superb playing in the instrumental ensemble that really brings Britten’s score to life.
Steuart Bedford’s is perhaps the most convincing version thanks to his very distinctive soloists. Anne Collins and Anne Murray, as Mrs Peachum and her daughter, are superb and very clear. Philip Langridge could perhaps me even more mischievous than he is but he does sing incredibly well as Macheath. Meanwhile Robert Lloyd, as Peachum, has an incredibly sonorous and low pitched voice.
The Chandos recording for Christian Curnyn is a little wider in scope, but the instrumentalists faithfully recreate Britten’s colourful score, the start of ‘A Maid is like the Golden ore’ being a good example. The spoken word passages are very well done too.
Spotify
Very unusually there are no available versions of The Beggar’s Opera on Spotify. However audio clips can be accessed above, along with the complete opera in a BBC broadcast on YouTube.
Also written in 1948: Shostakovich — From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op.79
The Story of St. Nicholas: Giving Dowry to Three Poor Girls by Fra Angelico (1448)
Saint Nicolas, Op.42 – cantata for tenor solo, chorus (SATB), semi-chorus (SA), four boy singers and string orchestra, piano duet, percussion and organ (December 1947 – 31 May 1948, Britten aged 34)
I. Introduction
II. The Birth of Nicolas
III. Nicolas devotes himself to God
IV. He journeys to Palestine
V. Nicolas comes to Myra and is chosen Bishop
VI. Nicolas from prison
VII. Nicolas and the pickled boys
VIII. His piety and marvellous works
IX. The death of Nicolas
Dedication This Cantata was written for performance at the centenary celebrations of Lancing College, Sussex, on 24 July 1948
Text Eric Crozier
Duration 50′
Audio clips
Taken from two recordings – that by the composer on Decca (1-5), and a newer version conducted by Stephen Layton on Hyperion (6-9). With thanks to both companies.
I. Introduction
II. The Birth of Nicolas
III. Nicolas devotes himself to God
IV. He journeys to Palestine
V. Nicolas comes to Myra and is chosen Bishop
VI. Nicolas from prison
VII. Nicolas and the pickled boys
VIII. His piety and marvellous works
IX. The death of Nicolas
Background and Critical Reception
Britten’s honouring of the Christmas saint was timed for the centenary of Peter Pears’ old school, Lancing College in Sussex. Yet Saint Nicolas did not receive his first performance there – in fact it opened the very first Aldeburgh Festival in June 1948. Critics were requested not to write about the piece until its primary function at the school had been performed. The highly acclaimed libretto is from Eric Crozier, with whom Britten wrote Albert Herring.
Donald Mitchell, in his biography of the composer, observes that ‘for a year his music continued in the blithe spirit that Albert Herring had engendered’. He also notes how the work combines professional and amateur, Britten seeking not to exclude anybody on the grounds of musical talent. ‘There are testing but rewarding parts for the amateur singers and instrumentalists; congregational hymns, and one of the catchiest of his tunes for The Birth of Nicolas.’
This gives the strong sense Britten was writing for all ages and beliefs, and is reinforced by Stephen Arthur Allen. Writing in The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, he declares it as ‘not purely a work for religious digest’. Furthermore, ‘A duality of narrative may be perceived through the dilemma between Nicolas’s public and private world:
“Our eyes are blinded by the holiness you bear,
The bishop’s robe, the mitre and the cross of gold.
Obscure the simple man within the Saint.
Strip off your glory, Nicolas, Nicolas, and speak! Speak!”
He warms to his theme. ‘The transparent nescience of The Birth of Nicolas is reinforced by its A major setting. The presence of the tritone, governing the stepwise movement of the sequence in each phrase, demonstrates that Britten is able to write music that children can engage with and sing easily, while embodying sophisticated intervals and a symbolic dimension that offsets generic expectations otherwise associated with such material.’
After that, perhaps the words of Michael Kennedy are key: ‘There is little need to examine this cantata in detail; it is best experienced whole and without analytical preparation.’
Thoughts
The advice from Michael Kennedy to refrain from analysing Saint Nicolas too much is sound indeed, for this is a dramatic piece that works best taken on face value.
Once again it is possible to witness Britten’s ability to write dramatic sacred music, and as in The Company of Heaven he bolsters that with sympathetically set hymn tunes. There is a strong sense of progression through the life of Saint Nicolas, too, and at his birth he gets a really catchy tune, written for the boys’ choir in a joyous A major. As he journeys to Palestine Britten colours his relatively small orchestral forces with a glassy, oscillating line for the two pianos and wispy held strings.
Meanwhile the tenor soloist – Pears, of course – gets frequent opportunities to exploit his talent for legato singing, with some extremely lyrical writing that would seem to me to have a strong Italianate flavour, that of Verdi perhaps.
The hymn quotations invite the involvement of a congregation, another element in common with The Company of Heaven. However Britten cannot resist the odd piece of harmonic mischief, and All People That on Earth do dwell, so beloved of Vaughan Williams, gets some unexpected minor chords. I couldn’t help but think that was a deliberate thumbing of the nose!
There is, however, a certain amount of homage being paid here, deliberate or otherwise. I was sure in places I could detect hints of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius – especially in the way the two works end, alike in key in harmony, while there are passing elements of Handel and Bach, via Mendelssohn.
Once again Britten uses the performing spaces to his advantage, positioning the children’s choir a distance away from the main action. This is especially effective after the swell of the choir towards the end of His piety and marvellous works, which cuts to the trebles singing ‘Alleluia’ in the distance. It is a magical moment.
Equally fine are the climactic closing pages, the death of the saint marked by the singing of the Nunc Dimittis chant, Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in piece, which seals the deal on a very fine and enjoyable work.
Recordings used
Peter Pears (tenor), David Hemmings (treble), Girls’ Choir Of Sir John Leman School, Beccles, Boys’ Choir Of Ipswich School Preparatory Department, The Aldeburgh Festival Orchestra / Benjamin Britten (Decca)
Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor), Harry Briggs (treble), Choristers of St George’s Chapel Windsor, Girls of Warwick University Chamber Choir, Choirs of Sevenoaks and Tonbridge Schools, Choir of Christ Church Southgate, Penshurst Choral Society, The Occasional Choir, Corydon Singers, English Chamber Orchestra / Matthew Best (Hyperion)
Allan Clayton (tenor), Luke McWatters (treble), Holst Singers, Boys of the Temple Church Choir, City of London Sinfonia / Stephen Layton (Hyperion)
Andrew Kennedy (tenor), Choir of King’s College Cambridge, Sawston Village College Choir, Cambridge University Musical Society, Britten Sinfonia / Stephen Cleobury (King’s College Cambridge)
A terrific discography of recordings, even before one considers the version conducted by Sir David Willcocks on EMI. Britten’s version, so often the first point of reference, is notable for several aspects – the complete suitability of Pears for the tenor part, which he inhabits completely, and the distinctive voice of David Hemmings, his pure tones ideal for the treble solos. Perhaps unusually the recording quality is not so good, and the important spatial aspects of the work feel two-dimensional.
This is where the fine digital recordings come in. A new version from King’s College Cambridge, the first release on their new in-house label this year, has vast reverberation, but this is extremely well handled by the engineers, especially at the thunderous and thrilling end.
Anthony Rolfe Johnson is a wonderful soloist for Matthew Best, who conducts a passionate account for Hyperion, while Stephen Layton oversees an even better recording, his trebles perfectly positioned in the sonic picture.
Spotify
This playlist offers the recording from Britten mentioned above, as well as that by Sir David Willcocks (EMI) in which Robert Tear is the soloist. The new King’s College Choir version is also included, as is a recording with Steuart Bedford conducting the Tallis Chamber Choir and the English Chamber Orchestra, with Philip Langridge as the Saint.
Also written in 1948: Richard Strauss – Four Last Songs
Good Morning Britten 