BaL 10.03.18 - Britten: Piano Concerto Op. 13

[greenilex]

Nobody picked up on my post earlier...I’m interested in artists who revised their work post-World War, for example Britten and Auden.

Why do we think the third movement was revised? To reflect Victory?

[LMcD]

I like Osborne's a lot, and Shelley, too.

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010764

Have you heard that one? I had hoped a certain young man would have recorded the concerto by now........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD7gjmvM66M

I've just watched the Benjamin Grosvenor - pretty impressive! One passage in the 2nd movement was very similar to a movement in the 'Mont Juic' suite. Hardly surprising, perhaps, given that they have consecutive opus numbers.
5 harps!
(I also enjoyed the Morton Gould!)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Why do we think the third movement was revised? To reflect Victory?

In Britten's case it seems unlikely. He revised his first opera, Paul Bunyan, shortly before his death.

[HighlandDougie]

Nobody picked up on my post earlier...I’m interested in artists who revised their work post-World War, for example Britten and Auden.

Why do we think the third movement was revised? To reflect Victory?

Clifford Curzon may have been partly responsible. As indicated on BaL he was due to perform the concerto. From the correspondence between him and BB, revision on musical grounds seems likelier than any more overt political statement. There is an interesting - if not wholly convincing - article on the concerto which one can access via JSTOR (easy to register; four items per month thereafter accessible as read-only):

Eric Roseberry - Britten’s Piano Concerto: The Original Version in Tempo 172 (CUP March 1990) pps 10 - 18

[Cockney Sparrow]

(Just to say the Barbican Library enables access to JSTOR (although as I have never used it, I am not sure if it is the full range of access). No residential requirement. And you get access to Oxford Music Online (in which, I think, grove is subsumed) and Naxos Music Library too. If you can pass through London with the inevitable ID, it may be worth joining.
https://col.ent.sirsidynix.net.uk/cl...0%7C%7C%7Ctrue

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...-library/page2

[teamsaint]

(Just to say the Barbican Library enables access to JSTOR (although as I have never used it, I am not sure if it is the full range of access). No residential requirement. And you get access to Oxford Music Online (in which, I think, grove is subsumed) and Naxos Music Library too. If you can pass through London with the inevitable ID, it may be worth joining.
https://col.ent.sirsidynix.net.uk/cl...0%7C%7C%7Ctrue

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...-library/page2

Thanks CS, very useful indeed.

[richardfinegold]

Isn't that what they call piracy?

I call it friends with benefits

[greenilex]

Thank you for the Eric Roseberry reference.

[Nick Armstrong]

Much as I love most of Britten, I have never been very interested in this piece. I’m beginning to enjoy it more, but largely as a ‘portrait of the artist as a young man’.

Same here and as mentioned above I have the Osborne disc already for Diversions - I should give the concerto a listen too now. It does strike me as would-be Prokofiev.

But this annoying BAL did nothing to warm me towards the piece, and was a model of how not to broadcast - the two of them talking over each other, the main reviewer constantly stuttering ('kind of... kind of... kind of'), background babble.

Plus it took me about 5 minutes of unplanned live listening on Friday night to turn off radio due to repetitive mantra and forced absence of direct article... 'sagegatesheadsagegatesheadsagegateshead'

[Pianorak]

. . . as mentioned above I have the Osborne disc already for Diversions -

If you like Osborne - you'll like his Nikolai Kapustin https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kapustin-Pi...Steven+Osborne

[Barbirollians]

My favourite account of Diversions is the Leon Fleisher recording.

[BBMmk2]

Same here and as mentioned above I have the Osborne disc already for Diversions - I should give the concerto a listen too now. It does strike me as would-be Prokofiev.

But this annoying BAL did nothing to warm me towards the piece, and was a model of how not to broadcast - the two of them talking over each other, the main reviewer constantly stuttering ('kind of... kind of... kind of'), background babble.

Plus it took me about 5 minutes of unplanned live listening on Friday night to turn off radio due to repetitive mantra and forced absence of direct article... 'sagegatesheadsagegatesheadsagegateshead'

I might plummet for the Osborne disc, as I do rather like his artistry, to say the least!

But people have commented about his Debussy disc for Hyperion, less favourably? Sure not?

[HighlandDougie]

I might plummet for the Osborne disc, as I do rather like his artistry, to say the least!

But people have commented about his Debussy disc for Hyperion, less favourably? Sure not?

I'm a great admirer of Steven Osborne (not least for the fact that he is a thoroughly modest and down-to-earth person) - and have the most recent Debussy recital, as well as the Britten (and earlier Debussy). FWIW - and it's really a matter of how one likes one's Debussy - I think that Britten suits him better. Having said that, when put head-to-head with Stephen Hough on Record Review, the reviewer (I've forgotten who) marginally preferred Osborne.

[BBMmk2]

I'm a great admirer of Steven Osborne (not least for the fact that he is a thoroughly modest and down-to-earth person) - and have the most recent Debussy recital, as well as the Britten (and earlier Debussy). FWIW - and it's really a matter of how one likes one's Debussy - I think that Britten suits him better. Having said that, when put head-to-head with Stephen Hough on Record Review, the reviewer (I've forgotten who) marginally preferred Osborne.

Cheers for that HD. Will duly order.

[Stanfordian]

This is a piece that needs concentration. It is NOT as widely known as many other concertos, so that the format of this BAL actually undermined any chance Ms Jeal might have had in carefully introducing us to the shape and structure as she went along.

Yes, we DO need to hear it complete.

What really upset me was that Erica Jeal sounded nervous doing it live from the start, and he prompted and then virtually took over, she got less and less sure of what she wanted to say, he intervened in some panic more and more 'to help her' and by the end, it became HIS BAL and not hers, even if the final choice he knew before the start of course! A real mess, and the Britten piece got completely lost in a Slough of Despond.

A simply appalling editorial misread of what this concerto needed on air. Poor Miss Jeal is going to need some real incentive to ever want to repeat such misery.

As said above, and passim on other RR threads, many listeners comment on these two-fers, and almost everyone gives them thumbs downs. Why the heck they do it, I simply cannot understand.

I've just caught up with Saturday's Record Review. Sorry to say that I found listening to Erica Jeal's presentation excruciating at times with all that hesitation, umming and ahhing; despite the interesting content. I didn't think Andrew McGregor was as interruptive as other have said.

Played by Andrew McGregor a bit later on in the programme I'll be delighted if I don't ever hear again Rossini's duet for two cats 'Duetto buffo di due gatti'.