Britten
David Nice
This is great news. It should have been great news back in 2006-7, when Wigglesworth – Mark, not to be confused with the young, photogenic Ryan, composer and, when I last saw him, barely competent baton-wielder - was among the contenders for the post of Music Director at English National Opera. As it happened, the then relatively unknown Edward Gardner sailed into the job with precocious assurance and versatility.Gardner leaves at the end of the 2014-15 season to take up a post with the world-class Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. Only his Mozart has been uncertain; but he has given us, among Read more ...
graham.rickson
A Festival of Britten National Youth Choirs of Great Britain (Delphian)Britten's 1961 Fancie opens this collection – a tiny, sublime choral coda to the opera A Midsummer Night's Dream. It lasts barely a minute, and you'll hopefully want to wind back and listen to it again. And again. Has any composer written so well for childrens' voices? One of the pleasures of this anthology of sacred and secular choral music is the prevailing positivity, a necessary reminder that Britten's output is not all darkness and sorrow. Eight different groups perform here, collectively under the banner of the Read more ...
David Nice
Which musical calendar year isn’t laden down with composer commemorations, too often a pretext for lazy and unimaginative planning? The last 12 months, with Verdi, Wagner and Britten as the birthday boys (in case you failed to hear), have raised the stakes.It looked on paper as if the BBC Proms were going for the obvious: all the major Wagner operas except The Flying Dutchman and The Mastersingers in semi-staged versions.The execution exceeded everyone’s wildest hopes (there, I’ve snuck in a collective top choice already). Now, it seems, is the time when opera is becoming the designer’s Read more ...
Iestyn Davies
“A cold coming we had of it,” grumble the three kings in T S Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi” later set by Britten as his Canticle IV. “Just the worst time of year for a journey,” they complain, carried onwards by the ungulate bass notes of the piano. Barely 48 hours after having stepped foot on the harsh, wintry Russian soil my two travelling companions (Ian Bostridge and Peter Coleman-Wright) and I lined up on the stage of the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and delivered Britten’s five Canticles, weary eyed and journey worn. One could say this was life imitating art, save for Read more ...
Mark Valencia
Never review the audience. Thus goes the dictum, so there’ll be no word from me about the cacophony of coughers who conspired to ruin the concert, no complaint about the woman with a video recorder, unchallenged by Barbican staff until the end of the evening, who drove those sitting near her to distraction, and no mention of the damage done to A Ceremony of Carols by the sizeable faction who shattered its charm by clapping at random intervals – an act that may conceivably have pleased today’s advocates of applause between movements but was ruinous to Britten’s blissful structuring.No, the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Britten: Saint Nicolas, Hymn to St Cecilia, Rejoice in the Lamb Andrew Kennedy (tenor), Choir of Kings College Cambridge, Britten Sinfonia/Stephen Cleobury (Kings College)After beginning work on the cantata Saint Nicolas in 1947, Britten confessed in a letter that “it'll be difficult to write, because that mixture of subtlety and simplicity is most extending, but very interesting...” In the event, the two extremes were managed magnificently, and listening to this superb new recording makes one appreciate just how successful Britten was in mixing accessibility with compositional rigour. Read more ...
David Nice
There are probably more fine string quartets in the world than audiences to listen to them, or so a gloomy estimate from a major chamber music festival would have us believe. Fortunately the Wigmore Hall usually guarantees crowds to hear the best, and at the highest level too we’re spoilt for choice. After two outstandingly vibrant recent visitors, the Belcea and Jerusalem Quartets, the equally touted Pavel Haas Quartet merely seemed very good rather than great, though they upped the stakes when mercurial 22-year-old Daniil Trifonov joined them for Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet.At first, there Read more ...
Humphrey Burton
The most intensive period of music-making I’ll ever experience, celebrating the 100th birthday of Benjamin Britten in and around his home town, ended on Sunday. I’m an Aldeburgh resident and I attended everything on offer. I thought the best way to provide an overview was to compile a diary of the past four days with a line or two about each event. Thursday 21 November (eve of the birthday) 3pm A stiff North-East wind is blowing down Crag Path and the rain is near horizontal: the Storm Interlude from Peter Grimes comes to mind. A brisk walk up the hill to pay respects in the Read more ...
David Nice
Three cheers for good old Albert, natural laugh-out-loud heir of Verdi’s Falstaff and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and the best possible way to mark creator Britten’s being one hundred years and one day old. Youth has its day in both those earlier masterpieces, but the lovers are subordinate to the middle-aged comic protagonists. Here they're the equals of a hero who is no scamster but a shy grocer’s boy who busts out drinking and worse to loosen the apron strings of a prim community. He may have had his funniest incarnation yet last night in young Andrew Staples' characterisation, very much at Read more ...
David Nice
“Translated Daughter, come down and startle/Composing mortals with immortal fire.” So W H Auden invokes heavenly Cecilia, patron saint of music, and it seems she did just that with Benjamin Britten, who set Auden’s text for unaccompanied choir and happened to be born on the saint’s day 100 years ago.On the day itself, this Hymn to St Cecilia was the one piece that cried out to be heard, so last night I headed up to Islington to hear The Sixteen – in this case The Twenty-Two plus harp and piano - in the atmospheric surroundings of the spooky Union Chapel, commandeered as part of the Barbican Read more ...
David Nice
How many reviews of War Requiem do you want to read in Britten centenary year? This is theartsdesk’s fourth, and my second – simply because though I reckon one live performance every five years is enough, Rattle’s much-anticipated Berlin Philharmonic interpretation fell almost entirely flat, and I wanted to hear at least one good enough to move me to tears.Last night’s under the special circumstances of Remembrance Sunday wasn’t just good; it hit the heights and plumbed the depths, with no weak link in any of the soloists, choirs, orchestra or instrumental soloists. So much so that the tears Read more ...
David Nice
Pure, unorthodox genius: the terms apply both to the three works on the Belcea Quartet’s programme – Haydn at his most compressed, Britten unbuttoned and sunny, Shostakovich hitting the tragic heights – and, if the term “genius” can be applied to re-creative artists, to the players themselves. Corina Belcea could surely have as big a solo career as violinists like Julia Fischer and Lisa Batiashvili, but she chooses to work with equally committed colleagues Axel Schacher, Krzystof Chorzelski and Antoine Lederlin in what is by and large a greater, wider repertoire.Shostakovich once asked the Read more ...