Benjamin Britten

[Mandryka]

I see that there are three different editions of Colin Davis' 1978 recording of Britten's PETER GRIMES.  Since I don't need a libretto, I cannot imagine it would make any difference which one I get.  If someone knows of some advantage or disadvantage to any of these, please say so!

1999:
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2011:
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2013:
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and for good measure the original (?) CD release, ~1991:
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You know that Colin Davis or Jon Vickers made some changes to the libretto of Grimes, something which I believe pissed off Britten and was one reason for the bad feeling he held towards him? (Another reason was probably Vickers's politically incorrect attitude to gay men.) The changes seem very minor to me, I've never understood what all the fuss was about.

Re Pears in Grimes, I'm not convinced that it's best to play the role like an alienated university professor. See what you think when you hear Vickers, the Hut Scene is unforgettable. I have my doubts about Vickers in the final scene, for that Langridge on DVD with ENO is very convincingly off his rocker. Ans maybe he croons a bit too much  in "Now the great bear".

When Britten first wrote it, he had a more violent hut scene, I believe the censors made him tone it down. I'm sure I once heard Pears in the original version recorded at the old Sadler's Wells, in some BBC documentary.

[knight66]

The changes Vickers made are very, very minor and I have no idea why he made them, but like you, it does not make me feel he betrayed the composer or the part. I do think that Pears is flat out prissy and I cannot accept him in this role. Grimes is on the edge, suppressed with violence that flashes out and Britten leaves it opaque as to whether the apprentice was deliberately abused, or in the control of a man detached from the norms of human interaction and emotionally clumsy on an epic scale.

I have written before that it is an opera for grown-ups and as so often with Britten, he brings an outsider to life and in this case casts a very analytical look at the society that casts Grimes out.

It is a pity he turned his back on what is grand opera. He breathed life into a format that has struggled since the death of Puccini.

Mike

[Mandryka]

The changes Vickers made are very, very minor and I have no idea why he made them, but like you, it does not make me feel he betrayed the composer or the part. I do think that Pears is flat out prissy and I cannot accept him in this role. Grimes is on the edge, suppressed with violence that flashes out and Britten leaves it opaque as to whether the apprentice was deliberately abused, or in the control of a man detached from the norms of human interaction and emotionally clumsy on an epic scale.

I have written before that it is an opera for grown-ups and as so often with Britten, he brings an outsider to life and in this case casts a very analytical look at the society that casts Grimes out.

It is a pity he turned his back on what is grand opera. He breathed life into a format that has struggled since the death of Puccini.

Mike

Did you ever see Vickers sing it? I wonder if that Moshinsky production is still in service, it's about five years since I last went to Covent Garden. Maybe longer.

[knight66]

I had tickets to see him....and he cancelled and I saw someone's name I don't remember. I do have that production on DVD, somehow diminished.

Mike

[Mandryka]

I had tickets to see him....and he cancelled and I saw someone's name I don't remember. I do have that production on DVD, somehow diminished.

Mike

Oh yes he was always doing that. I remember that he was indisposed for  his final scheduled Grimes at Covent Garden.

[knight66]

I did catch Vickers in Otello and that was remarkable. I am waiting for the Grimes to be issued on DVD from the beach at Aldeburgh this year, that looked like it would be worth catching.

Mike

[North Star]

As good an excuse as any to raise the centenarian's topic:

Here is a quote from James Conlon, which I read today, in an article about the operas of Benjamin Britten:
(My emphasis above)

See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304520704579125240632913728.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_6

Mr. Conlon would rather not articulate what makes Britten's music special—he prefers to let the scores speak for themselves—but when pressed, he said: "Britten writes music that is illustrative; it inspires images. His music is expressive and lyrical and dramatic. It is hypnotic. This is not music that screams at you, but rather music that draws you in. And that's the reason his music's popularity has sometimes lagged behind its great qualities."

[Karl Henning]

This is not music that screams at you, but rather music that draws you in.

It's the screamers who do grab the attention, though, ain't it?

[North Star]

It's the screamers who do grab the attention, though, ain't it?

You mean Lulu, don't you?

[Octave]

Late thanks to Mandryka and Mike for discussion of the Vickers/GRIMES cuts.

Here's a link to a recent article on Britten's work in relation to cinema:

Storming the stage: Benjamin Britten's cinematic mind by Paul Kildea, published 16 Oct 2013
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/storming-stage-benjamin-britten-s-cinematic-mind
"How Britain's greatest modern composer revitalised his country's opera under the sign of the movies."

[TheGSMoeller]

So there are two new String Quartet recordings from Endellion and Takacs....



I haven't purchased either one, yet. I was about to jump to the Takacs immediately, but have slowed down purchasing until holiday season is close to over. Truthfully I feel in no hurry because I'm completely satisfied with my trio of Belcea, Maggini and Britten Quartet performances, which between the three offer an entire range of contrast. But I'd like to hear these two, been sampling the Takacs which sounds wonderfully balanced.

[North Star]

Surely the Endellion is just a reissue. I have their recordings of all those works in the EMI Britten Collector's Edition.

[TheGSMoeller]

Surely the Endellion is just a reissue. I have their recordings of all those works in the EMI Britten Collector's Edition.

I originally thought so too, but Warner classics site is labeling this as a new recording

[Mirror Image]

Thought I would cross-post this from the 'Purchases' thread:

Just bought:



Contents of the box:



I bought this for actually a good price ($212) from Amazon.de. I've seen it for $265 and much higher on other sites. There's so much of this music that I didn't own. I'll part with my older Britten Conducts Britten sets as a result of this purchase.

If this wasn't enough, I also bought this:



Needless to say, this is my Christmas present to myself.

I'm a very happy camper. Anyone interested in my Britten Conducts Britten sets, please message me here. I'll be glad to send them your way, but with two caveats: you must pay for shipping and must live in the US or Canada.

The sets that own are the orchestral set (7-CDs), the opera sets (Vol. 1 - 8-CDs, Vol. 2 - 10-CDs), and the War Requiem (2006 remastered edition).

[Mirror Image]

A fascinating read for those interested:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/15/when-oliver-knussen-benjamin-britten

[Mirror Image]

That last movement of Suite on English Folk Tunes 'A Time There Was...' is so haunting. Anyone familiar with this work?

[Mirror Image]

It really surprises me that one of the major composers of the 20th Century only has 12 pages. Well it's time to change that!

[Mirror Image]

A Britten classic: Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings -

On his way back from America in 1942, Britten began two choral works, Hymn to Saint Cecilia and A Ceremony of Carols, that were premiered the same year. But morale-boosting concerts with tenor Peter Pears (both were conscientious objectors and already lifelong partners) preoccupied them for the next 11 months. Not until he was hospitalized with measles early in 1943 did Britten began to compose again, working on what he described as "6 Nocturnes for Peter and a lovely young horn player, Dennis Brain, & Strings." He dedicated the finished Serenade to Edward Sackville-West, who later wrote: "The subject is Night...the lengthening shadow, the distant bugle at sunset, the Baroque panoply of the starry sky, the heavy angels of sleep; but also the cloak of evil -- the worm in the heart of [William Blake's] rose, the secret sense of sin in the heart of man. The whole sequence forms an Elegy or Nocturnal, as Donne would have called it." It was premiered with Walter Goehr and his orchestra in London's Wigmore Hall on October 15, 1943.

The horn plays unaccompanied on natural (rather than tempered) harmonics at the beginning and the end, onstage in the Prologue. In the Pastoral, the first song, in D flat, Charles Cotton's seventeenth century words "could be a description of a Constable landscape...[while] the horn continues to play in imitative diatonic phrases." So wrote Humphrey Carpenter in his 1992 biography of Britten. In the succeeding Nocturne (words by Alfred Lord Tennyson, ABA form, E flat and C major), the horn echoes and later embellishes its partner's jaunty, triplet-filled melody. Next, in the Blake Elegy, subject matter darkens the music landscape. Its extended horn preface and postlude are dominated by descending half-step intervals, eerily so at the end -- symbolizing "the sense of sin" that had its origin, for Britten, in boarding and public schools that he both dreaded and despised. The anonymous, fifteenth century Lyke Wake Dirge follows in grim G minor, and is keened by the tenor at the upper extreme of his voice, keeping the half-step intervals from the Elegy. Here, however, they ascend. Carpenter calls this "a relentless funeral march in the strings...the tenor's swoops up the octave suggest mortal terror of judgment." Its canonic character turns ghoulish at the horn's brash intrusion more than halfway through. The B flat setting of Ben Jonson's Hymn to Diana, goddess of the moon as well as the chase, is marked "presto e leggiero." Triplet-filled hunting calls and scales passages on the horn are imitated by the tenor in a cadenza near the end. The sixth and final song lets the horn rest while the tenor sings Keats' sonnet about the healing power of sleep, albeit uneasily, almost pleading on repeated high D's at the end ("seal the hushèd casket of my soul") over a sustained D by two solo violins and viola. From offstage, the horn repeats the Prologue note for note in an Epilogue.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

Does anyone have any favorite performances of this works. I'm a big fan of both of Bostridge's performances and, of course, Pears.

[TheGSMoeller]

Does anyone have any favorite performances of this works. I'm a big fan of both of Bostridge's performances and, of course, Pears.

Both Bostridge recordings are good. I've always enjoyed Anthony Rolfe Johnson (Chandos) and Phillip Langridge (Naxos) in Serenade.

[The new erato]

Fortunately there are many good recordings of the wonderful Serenade. Of recent issues I like this:

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coupled with the wonderful Finzi.

I find it interesting to compare Brittens setting of the Dirge to Stravinsky's.