Benjamin Britten

[Leo K.]

It doesn't take long to get into a Britten phase for me, especially considering I've admired his music for many years.

I can hear why that would be! This music is incredible!

Look at that box! I want that NOW. 

[Mirror Image]

I can hear why that would be! This music is incredible!

Look at that box! I want that NOW. 

It really is. You can get for $56 from Presto Classical which is an excellent deal.

[Mirror Image]

It really surprises me that the Britten thread has only 10 pages.

Anyway, to all the Britten fans, what is one work by Britten that you couldn't live without?

[The new erato]

If pressed: The Serenade + the 3rd string quartet.

[Mirror Image]

Here's one of the stupidest reviews I've ever read on Amazon...

This is a review of the EMI Collector's Edition of Britten:

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Title: Seems a bit over the top

I suppose you'd have to be a tremendous BB fan to buy this set. Personally I would stick to individual pieces. The "War Requiem" is a tremendous masterpiece and deserves to be bought in the original recording with Britten recording ( as do most performances). "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" ( "Variations on a theme of Purcell") is also tremendously enjoyable, likewise the "Simple Symphony", a compilation of his childhood compositions. If you are into opera "Peter Grimes" is easily the best and, if not, the "Sea Interludes" are fine post-Debussy pieces. I'm sorry to say I find a lot of the rest of Britten's music rather minor, but you are welcome to disagree.

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The title of the 'review' says it all. The whole idea is for it to be 'over the top.' It's a freakin' collector's edition!!! What did you want EMI to do put 2 CDs in the set and call it the collector's edition? As for his own personal comments, he's certainly entitled to those opinions, but I certainly don't share them! Britten wrote a lot of fine music and I disagree that a lot of this music is 'minor.' He was one of the greatest 20th Century composers after all. He was a master composer and I really don't think this reviewer has the whole scope of Britten's compositional range in his grasp.

[Mirror Image]

Who's here is an admirer of Britten's Violin Concerto? Any favorite performances? I've recently become enamored with the Anthony Marwood performance with Ilan Volkov conducting on Hyperion.

I LOVE this work. That Passacaglia movement is so hauntingly beautiful and that middle movement sounds incredibly brutal. Here's a write-up about from All Music Guide:

Composed in 1939, this violin concerto was written at the close of a magical decade for violinists in which more great concertos for their instrument appeared than any other time (Stravinsky, Bartók, Bloch, Hindemith, Berg, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Sessions, Walton). It has never really been absent from the repertoire, but violinists who are seeking to add a concerto of this era to their repertoires generally choose the Stravinsky, Berg, or Prokofiev in preference to it. It is one of the first works Britten wrote after resettling in the United States. Britten uses a novel procedure in his sonata allegro (here, actually marked "moderato con moto") first movement: the gentle and tender opening theme (which is initially announced over a soft timpani figure) vies in the development with the aggressive second subject and wins by absorbing all the elements of the second theme into itself; when the recapitulation comes, the second subject is entirely absent. The middle movement is a scherzo which has aspects of the first, including the opening drum pattern. For the finale, the largest movement of the score, Britten provided the first of his notable line of magnificent passacaglias. Britten devised a theme of a sort that would return in important works: a patterned set of notes that moves itself around the circle of 12 available tones. He uses it to reach a conclusion that, rarely for violin concertos (a genre that usually ends with a flourish), concludes in territory unsettled as to whether it is major or minor.

[Mirror Image]

Okay, tomorrow I'm about to embark on my first Britten opera listen, I own the Britten Conducts Britten sets, I have my mind set on three operas for now, which one should I listen to first?

   
• Peter Grimes
• Death in Venice
• The Turn of the Screw

[TheGSMoeller]

Okay, tomorrow I'm about to embark on my first Britten opera listen, I own the Britten Conducts Britten sets, I have my mind set on three operas for now, which one should I listen to first?

   
• Peter Grimes

   Death in Venice
   

• The Turn of the Screw

[Mirror Image]

Why should I listen to that one first, Greg? Any particular reason why you single that one out?

[TheGSMoeller]

Why should I listen to that one first, Greg? Any particular reason why you single that one out?

Venice benefits from being composed very late in Britten's life, it contains all that made him such a versatile, multifaceted composer. The broad textures in his orchestrations (heavy use of percussion and piano) and brilliant use of the human voice. But more than anything, is how Britten musically conveys the agony, beauty and ultimately the heartbreak of Thomas Mann's story.

You really can't wrong with any of those operas, as long as you continue to explore them all. I think about how different Gloriana, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Peter Grimes are from each other, but also how well they compliment the career of Britten.

[Mirror Image]

Venice benefits from being composed very late in Britten's life, it contains all that made him such a versatile, multifaceted composer. The broad textures in his orchestrations (heavy use of percussion and piano) and brilliant use of the human voice. But more than anything, is how Britten musically conveys the agony, beauty and ultimately the heartbreak of Thomas Mann's story.

You really can't wrong with any of those operas, as long as you continue to explore them all. I think about how different Gloriana, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Peter Grimes are from each other, but also how well they compliment the career of Britten.

Thanks for the feedback, Greg. I notice you have the Hickox recording of Death in Venice, do you prefer it over Britten's own version? By the way, I really loved Phaedra, which I believe is Britten's last work (?).

[TheGSMoeller]

Thanks for the feedback, Greg. I notice you have the Hickox recording of Death in Venice, do you prefer it over Britten's own version? By the way, I really loved Phaedra, which I believe is Britten's last work (?).

I do have both, and prefer Hickox, although not because of any fault from Britten's account. Chandos shines in its presentation, as I noted before Venice is very percussion heavy, and it's channeled perfectly.

And Phaedra could be his last work, it was written same year he died I believe.

[Mirror Image]

I do have both, and prefer Hickox, although not because of any fault from Britten's account. Chandos shines in its presentation, as I noted before Venice is very percussion heavy, and it's channeled perfectly.

And Phaedra could be his last work, it was written same year he died I believe.

I'll definitely checkout Hickox's Death in Venice at some point. This may be one of my birthday purchases.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Who's here is an admirer of Britten's Violin Concerto? Any favorite performances?

Great piece, for sure. It first popped up on my radar one night many years ago in my car - my local classical station must've gotten a wild hair to actually program it, conservative as it is.

But the recording was the Haendel/Berglund/Bournemouth below which turned me on to the goodness of Britten. Been a fan ever since.




[asin]B00000DOAJ[/asin]

[Mirror Image]

Great piece, for sure. It first popped up on my radar one night many years ago in my car - my local classical station must've gotten a wild hair to actually program it, conservative as it is.

But the recording was the Haendel/Berglund/Bournemouth below which turned me on to the goodness of Britten. Been a fan ever since.




[asin]B00000DOAJ[/asin]

Yeah, somebody must have fallen asleep at the wheel to play Britten's VC. Anyway, that performance Haendel/Berglund is in the Britten Collector's Edition I bought last night. Excited to hear that performance!

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Yeah, somebody must have fallen asleep at the wheel to play Britten's VC. Anyway, that performance Haendel/Berglund is in the Britten Collector's Edition I bought last night. Excited to hear that performance!

I haven't heard any other recording of the VC but Haendel is a very fine violinist. She's also recorded my favorite Sibelius VC.

[Mirror Image]

I haven't heard any other recording of the VC but Haendel is a very fine violinist. She's also recorded my favorite Sibelius VC.

This is great to hear, DD. I'm not very familiar with Haendel's playing. One of the more recent Britten VC performances that has really impressed me was with Anthony Marwood and Ilan Volkov conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony on Hyperion. You should definitely checkout this performance. It also contains the early, but still masterful, Double Concerto and Lachryae.

[mjwal]

I used to have an old Supraphon  LP of the Violin Concerto, but I was converted (and how!) to the work by the superb Haendel performance. Since then I have acquired three new recordings: Zimmermann (with the Szymanowskis on Sony), Jansen (Decca) and Wilkomirska (Virtual Concert Hall). The latter, recorded live and very well in '67 with the Warsaw Phil under Rowicki, is a revelation, and has a stunning Tchaikovsky #4 as disc companion. I found Zimmermann a tad emotionally reserved, but Jansen is the contemporary touchstone for me in this work. Unfortunately the Beethoven Concerto it is coupled with is nothing really special compared with the fire and attack Jansen displays in Britten. So I couldn't do without Haendel, Wilkomirska and Jansen - how interesting that they are all women players. It is fascinating to hear the premiere performance by Antonio Brosa w/Barbirolli, a rough live recording from the 40s but pretty powerful too (I found that online somewhere).

[Mirror Image]

I used to have an old Supraphon  LP of the Violin Concerto, but I was converted (and how!) to the work by the superb Haendel performance. Since then I have acquired three new recordings: Zimmermann (with the Szymanowskis on Sony), Jansen (Decca) and Wilkomirska (Virtual Concert Hall). The latter, recorded live and very well in '67 with the Warsaw Phil under Rowicki, is a revelation, and has a stunning Tchaikovsky #4 as disc companion. I found Zimmermann a tad emotionally reserved, but Jansen is the contemporary touchstone for me in this work. Unfortunately the Beethoven Concerto it is coupled with is nothing really special compared with the fire and attack Jansen displays in Britten. So I couldn't do without Haendel, Wilkomirska and Jansen - how interesting that they are all women players. It is fascinating to hear the premiere performance by Antonio Brosa w/Barbirolli, a rough live recording from the 40s but pretty powerful too (I found that online somewhere).

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I, too, have that Zimmermann recording and it did nothing for me. In fact, I didn't even like his Szymanowski. Anyway, I need to go back and listen to the Jansen/Jarvi again. I expressed dissatisfaction with it, but I'll go back, at some point, and give it a fresh listen. Have you heard the Marwood/Volkov? This has proven to be a fantastic performance for me and I even prefer it over Lubotsky/Britten. I'd like to hear the Vengerov/Rostropovich performance at some point. Have you heard this one?

[Leo K.]

This is the one I have and it's great (haven't heard the Veale concerto but that may be good too).  Elegy strikes the dominant note, all the more surprising in a work which has no formally-designated slow movement, further evidence of Britten's mastery of symphonic rhetoric. since the variations tend to extreme brevity. You would think that would limit the soloist's elbow-room. This is merely one surprise the composer pulls off. Yet, while I can acknowledge the concerto's ingenuity, I'm struck far more by its intensity. Despite the concerto's unique, somewhat odd shape—the violin writing strikes with an even greater force, since Mordkovitch joins it with great feeling. The finale, for example, here every ounce of technique and musicality is demanded. I admit she sometimes comes across as too reserved—though not here in the finale, she's willing to let 'er rip, and it may become a matter of matching her to those concerti suited to her artistic personality. Mordkovitch has been tainted with the label "house violinist" for Chandos, but to me she just gets better and better. Certainly, she displays here a high order of musicianship indeed.