BaL 27.06.15 - Britten: Les Illuminations

[Simon Biazeck]

It's a pity the sound on the Ansermet rec. is so poor, because Suzanne Danco's interpretation is superb - diction, tone, the lot! I was disappointed when I sampled Piau's recording. She is not a patch on Danco.

[Mary Chambers]

There is such a recording, with Henry Wood conducting - I was sure that it, too, was on Youtube until recenly, or featured on a recent BBC4 programme, perhaps?

As it isn't generally (?at all?) available, it's not that surprising it wasn't mentioned/illustrated this morning.

I'm glad to hear it. I was beginning to think I must have imagined it.

[EdgeleyRob]

If it's not Pears/ECO/Britten it just doesn't sound right to me.
Don't ask me to explain why because I can't.

[Beef Oven!]

If it's not Pears/ECO/Britten it just doesn't sound right to me.
Don't ask me to explain why because I can't.

Why's that, Rob?

[Tony Halstead]

If it's not Pears/ECO/Britten it just doesn't sound right to me.
Don't ask me to explain why because I can't.

I can't really 'explain it' either, all I can say are some random thoughts and ideas....as follows:
when we hear PP singing 'Les Illuminations' conducted by BB himself it is as if we are hearing the composer - with his immaculate diction - speaking to us 'from the heart'. PP's inimitable vibrato and his plangent, reedy timbre somehow convey to us - miraculously and simultaneously - Rimbaud's south of France but also Britten's beloved Suffolk.
Having said that, I do confess that I prefer the soprano version and I love 'Flott's recording.

[Mary Chambers]

If it's not Pears/ECO/Britten it just doesn't sound right to me.
Don't ask me to explain why because I can't.

For me it's because we know that that is how the composer heard it. It's constantly said that he wrote it for soprano, but in fact there is evidence he had Pears in mind as well from the start. The letter where BB writes to PP that it is 'eventually for PP everywhere' seems to have been written on the very day he composed (or at least finished) Being Beauteous, March 16th 1939. He and Pears both understand the work in a way that no-one else can.

[EdgeleyRob]

Why's that, Rob?

Dunno ,ask Tony he knows.

[visualnickmos]

Having said that, I do confess that I prefer the soprano version and I love 'Flott's recording.

Which one? I think she made two - Naxos and Chandos.

[EdgeleyRob]

I can't really 'explain it' either, all I can say are some random thoughts and ideas....as follows:
when we hear PP singing 'Les Illuminations' conducted by BB himself it is as if we are hearing the composer - with his immaculate diction - speaking to us 'from the heart'. PP's inimitable vibrato and his plangent, reedy timbre somehow convey to us - miraculously and simultaneously - Rimbaud's south of France but also Britten's beloved Suffolk.
Having said that, I do confess that I prefer the soprano version and I love 'Flott's recording.

For me it's because we know that that is how the composer heard it. It's constantly said that he wrote it for soprano, but in fact there is evidence he had Pears in mind as well from the start. The letter where BB writes to PP that it is 'eventually for PP everywhere' seems to have been written on the very day he composed (or at least finished) Being Beauteous, March 16th 1939. He and Pears both understand the work in a way that no-one else can.

Thank you both.

Sort of sums up what I think when I hear this work,more eloquently put than I am able to do.

[Sir Velo]

Which one? I think she made two - Naxos and Chandos.

It was actually on Collins Classics not Naxos, Nick. Naxos licensed much of the Britten/Bedford series when Collins folded.

[Pulcinella]

I've just played the Jill Gomez performance with the Endymion Ensemble that's coupled with Felicity Palmer's Phaedra and Five French Folksong Arrangements on Decca and I feel the Felicity Lott is better. I will dig up the Pears and the Ainsley CDs later, but I prefer female voices in this work.

EMI, not Decca, Beefy!
I like the Heather Harper recording.

[underthecountertenor]

I am very fond of the John Mark Ainsley version

Me too. It's on a fine disc, which has been a BaL winner before (for Nocturne?). Not mentioned at all yesterday, unless I missed it. Perhaps it's nla: when it last 'won' it has just been deleted I think. It richly deserves a reissue.

[Beef Oven!]

EMI, not Decca, Beefy!
I like the Heather Harper recording.

Correct, I have it in front of me as I type!. I need to look more carefully at my Britten CDs! I think I had in mind the Decca set of 'The Rape Of Lucretia' that I have - that also has a recording of Phaedra on it.

[Beef Oven!]

I've just played the Jill Gomez performance with the Endymion Ensemble that's coupled with Felicity Palmer's Phaedra and Five French Folksong Arrangements on Decca and I feel the Felicity Lott is better. I will dig up the Pears and the Ainsley CDs later, but I prefer female voices in this work.

This is turning into a bit of a Brittensongenliedercyklenschaft for me this morning.

The Ainsley and Pears are just as good as the female voice versions, so I'm changing my tune a bit! by this afternoon I'll be back with the ladies, no doubt!

[Nick Armstrong]

If one must open one's review with a phrase in French, please get the accent at least passable!

Oh glory be, yes... What a Parade of tortured and sometimes downright incomprehensible French that BAL was - reviewer and singers alike, but with certain honourable and most welcome exceptions!

From the reviewer's opening "clay" for "clé", via "vee" for "Villes" to that early Pears recording that made "beauté" sound almost like "bow-tie" - it all showed how tough it can be getting the old Frong-say right. I'm not bilingual but, like others here, having been marinaded in it since an early age, it does matter to me that the French is intelligible at least (and certainly not ludicrous).

It's the main problem for me with the final choice. French intelligibility was clearly unlikely to be uppermost in the mind of Erica "clay" Jeal - and I found that I could understand very few of the words sung by the 'winner' Karina Gauvin. Odd, at first sight, as she is a French speaker - but she's a Canadian-French speaker, and the québécois accent is very strange compared with 'straight' French of whatever mainland accent. In the extract from Being Beauteous, I couldn't distinguish a single word except I think 'arbres' near the end.

So - a non-starter for me.

The stars in the diction department were, I thought, Suzanne Danco, Sandrine Piau, Heather Harper - sounded gorgeous I thought! - and... and... and... the SUBLIME Felicity Lott

Also, happy with Flott, RSNO,Thomson on Chandos. In fact, about to give it a spin!

Yes - I've had that for years, it's very very good. But I didn't know she'd recorded it as well with Bedford for Collins (now Naxos) - and that did sound exceptional. Unbelievably wonderful singing and EVERY WORD COMPREHENSIBLE and accurate as well as musically spot-on. She seemed only to 'lose' this BAL by a whisker.

For me she 'won' it by a mile.

.

Afterthought: I did hear things in the accompaniment in the Bostridge / Rattle version that I'd never heard before. Tempted, just to have the BPO in this music.