Sinfonia da Requiem

[Barbirollians]

I was listening to Barbirolli's live recording of this on BBC Legends earlier coupled with amongst other things a boisterous Walton Partita , a performance of the Young persons Guide that takes the music seriously and a stupendous In the South and what struck me is how bleak and astonishingly mature a work it is . In some ways even bleaker in this performance than in Britten's own or Rattle's recordings - what do other forumites think of this work nd what is your favourite recording ?

[Hornspieler]

I was listening to Barbirolli's live recording of this on BBC Legends earlier coupled with amongst other things a boisterous Walton Partita , a performance of the Young persons Guide that takes the music seriously and a stupendous In the South and what struck me is how bleak and astonishingly mature a work it is . In some ways even bleaker in this performance than in Britten's own or Rattle's recordings - what do other forumites think of this work nd what is your favourite recording ?

I can't stand the piece! Well, you did ask.

HS

[Richard Tarleton]

I hardly knew the work until I heard it played by BBC NOW and Francis-Xavier Roth in Cardiff in October 2011, and was bowled over by it. Sitting at the front of the hall it made quite an impression - bleak, as you say.

I've recently been trying to get to know Britten's cello music better in the Rostropovich/Britten recordings, and the Sinfonia is coupled with the Cello Symphony - haven't compared other versions. BTW Mary if you're reading this I'm getting on quite well with the cello suites, no 2 especially.

[rauschwerk]

I love this piece! I'm familiar with only two recordings, Britten's and Rattle's Of the two I slightly prefer Rattle for the way in which he handles the disintegration of the Dies Irae. To my mind, Britten lets the tension resolve too quickly.

[Alison]

I can't stand the piece! Well, you did ask.

HS

Do I sense it was the very devil to play, mr hornspieler ? The Previn version has served me well over the years. Did I see a new bbcso version recently listed in radio times ? That release had passed under my radar.

[Hornspieler]

Do I sense it was the very devil to play, mr hornspieler ? .

No, Alison. I just find it boring and depressing. I first encountered it with the LSO in 1956 and have played it many times since.
Scored (unneccesarily IMV) for SIX horns, Britten asks all six to play a high "A" in unison (marked "pp"). An accident that can't even wait to happen!

But nothing else of difficulty. I just feel that any person contemplating suicide would only need to hear this work to send them walking out into the sea until his hat floats.

HS

[Thomas Roth]

It´s a great piece and there is more to music than horn parts. Previn with LSO on EMI is easily the best. The sound on that recording is absolutely stunning, as is the playing. A desert island disc for me.

[Ferretfancy]

Britten recorded it twice, firstly in mono with the Danish State Radio Orchestra, and later in stereo with the LSO. Of the two I think the earlier one is more dramatic, in spite of the mono sound, it has more bite for me,especially in the vehement second movement, perhaps because it was the first time I heard it. Of other versions, Previn is very good, with nice weighty sound, and of course Barbirolli.
It's an amazing work with such an odd history. I sometimes think that Britten must have realised that a work based on Christian imagery would not have gone down well as a commission from the Empire of Japan!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It´s a great piece and there is more to music than horn parts.

Previn with LSO on EMI is easily the best.

The sound on that recording is absolutely stunning, as is the playing. A desert island disc for me.

... I hesitated about the "easily the best" as I haven't heard the Barbirolli or the NAXOS recordings. I shall hunt out Bob O'Reilly, 1) Because he was such a good conductor and 2) He conducted the premiere of this fabulous work.

(I love the way the aggressive Music of the Scherzo turns into the gentle, conciliatory lyricism of the Finale: Hate and Love - two sides of the same Human coin.)

[Serial_Apologist]

As with a lot of Britten - for me - I find in this piece a frequent mismatch between the harmonic language, which seems erratic and arbitrary, and the brilliant orchestral surface. I feel this typifies a lot of Britten. (It's probably the case that I do not in general like pandiatonic progressions, a kind of poor man's trite modalism - you know, meandering the white notes, other than in conveying flatness and spiritual exhaustion; eg as in the last movement of Mahler 9 - elsewhere they seem somehow a lazy way out from not giving meaningful thought to note-and-chord-to-chord progression, which I also find in a lot of the later music of Koechlin, and some of Milhaud's).

[Roehre]

The Sinfonia da Requiem is for me one of the favourite among BB's works.

I now mainly second FHG

It´s a great piece and there is more to music than horn parts.

Previn with LSO on EMI is easily the best. The sound on that recording is absolutely stunning, as is the playing. A desert island disc for me.

,
but without "easily", as the Barbirolli barbirollian mentions comes interpretatively very close -especially in its stressing of the piece's bleakness (though being a live performance, less so in terms of recording, but that's easily overcome) . The Rattle recording is not far behind either IMO.


In this work Britten recordings show that the composer's own performances not always should be considered the ultimate ones (as is the case with e.g. some of Stravinsky's) - unless, of course, we hear more in especially the Dies Irae mvt than actually is meant to be there by BB.

If one would like to wrong foot someone, here is a brilliant way how to (this is the passage Rauschwerk points at in #4 btw):
ask him/her to tell who the composer of the following fragment is, and to date it:
play a passage of the Sinfonia da Requiem at the end of the 2nd mvt Dies Irae, especially (in Simon Rattle's recording with the CBSO on EMI) starting at approximately 4'11" through to 4'30" .
If this doesn't sound 1960s avant garde I don't know what does...
If the person doesn't know the SdR, s/he'll never will guess

[Roehre]

....

It's an amazing work with such an odd history. I sometimes think that Britten must have realised that a work based on Christian imagery would not have gone down well as a commission from the Empire of Japan!

Or has BB taken the chance -inspired too by the death of his parents- to try to outshine Richard Strauss?

[Ferretfancy]

Prompted by this discussion, I've just listened again to Barbirolli / Concertgebouw, not having heard it for some time. It's a very good broadcast sound, although the horns are too prominent.The performance now strikes me as less than incisive. Barbirolli gets beautiful playing, as you might expect with this marvellous orchestra, but to me it's a little slow. The great opening chords are not clearly separated, and although the movement is lovingly played it doesn't have that overwhelming increase of tension as it progresses. The same applies to the climax at the end of the last movement, I don't find quite the sense of resolution that should be there, beautiful as it is.

Previn has much more snap and ferocity. After a pause I think I'll dig out Rhozdesvensky and remind myself what he makes of it.

[Barbirollians]

The Barbirolli recording I have is not the Cgbow but the Halle on BBC Legends in the late 1960s . Chilling in its bleakness I am not sure I want to listen to it too often though .

Digressing the performance of In the South is breathtaking - the only other one I have ever heard at the exalted level of the Silvestri .

[Mary Chambers]

I don't collect recordings so can't comment. I only have Britten's own.

Once he had the commission I think he just wrote what he wanted to write anyway. He described it as 'as anti-war as possible', and of course it was dedicated to the memory of his parents, who had both died by the time BB was 23 - so any bleakness is hardly surprising (though I don't find the ending particularly bleak). From letters and comments at the time I don't think he cared much what the Japanese thought. He had already been paid and spent the money (on a car, I think) by the time they rejected the piece. David Matthews commented that the piece looked like 'a deilberate attempt to disconcert', like Our Huning Fathers.