Britten

[EdgeleyRob]

I haven't (knowingly) heard the Tear/Giulini version of Serenade, but I do have his 1971 EMI recording of it with Alan Civil and the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, conducted by Marriner.
How do the two interpretations compare?
(I suppose I could LA and hear for myself!)

Also, Mary, I seem to recall a previous comment from you about the Quatre chansons: was it Jill Gomez' version you had not been that taken with?

IMVHO opinion the performance with Guilini is superior,maybe not much in it.
Just an nth degree more clarity in the singing I think,but what do I know.

[Nick Armstrong]

fabulous horn playing by Dale Clevenger

Just caught some, had forgotten how perfect and exciting his playing is!

[Stanley Stewart]

I've just watched a July,'99 off-air video of Britten's Serenade... in the Masterworks, Six Pieces of Britain series, which I subsequently transferred to DVD with improved quality of picture and sound; one of his most evocative works, a benchmark in his oeuvre, setting to music poetry by Keats, Tennyson and Blake. Ian Bostridge is the splendid soloist - at a stage before he developed irritating facial mannerisms which he managed to control over a few years -Timothy Brown the horn soloist, with the BBC SO/Sir Colin Davis - always a heart- pang to see him again.

Presenter Michael Berkeley, Britten's godson, explores the story of a man whose talent led WH Auden to comment that he was the only composer capable of preventing English from sounding ridiculous. The recording made at Blythburgh Church in Suffolk with the opening sequence a tracking shot from Aldeburgh along the coastline. Half the documentary uses archive footage which includes interviews with Donald Mitchell, John Amis, Peter Porter, Robin Holloway and Peter Pears in a 1958 interview and BB's understanding of his vocal range - an enticing glimpse of his singing the Nocturne Prelude. Refreshing, too, to see sequences from the WW2 concerts at the National Gallery - and those period 'faces' took me straight back to my adolesence! Before a full performance of the Serenade, Michael Berkeley added that the composition of the work was BB falling in love with British music again after his return from America. Watching the programme again is also rejuvenating.

[ardcarp]

he was the only composer capable of preventing English from sounding ridiculous.

Most of the time! I wonder if Mary C. has any views on some of his opera librettos...e.g. the Crozier and Piper ones?

[Pulcinella]

IMVHO opinion the performance with Guilini is superior,maybe not much in it.
Just an nth degree more clarity in the singing I think,but what do I know.

Thanks for this link.

Just caught some, had forgotten how perfect and exciting his playing is!

Certainly exciting, even on my iPad!

[Serial_Apologist]

Mention was made on today's programme of Britten's fulminations over plans for The Third Programme's programming, without going into what these were. Does anybody have any knowledge about this?

[Mary Chambers]

No, I don't think I've heard that before, or if I have I've forgotten.

I was unreasonably irritated by errors of fact in today's programme. The Old Mill is in Snape, not Aldeburgh, and it was Pears, not Britten, who collected pictures.

Apart from that, I enjoyed it.

Ardcarp, I do have some views on the librettos, but I have a bad cold at the moment and am barely capable of coherent thought.

[Mary Chambers]

Mention was made on today's programme of Britten's fulminations over plans for The Third Programme's programming, without going into what these were. Does anybody have any knowledge about this?

Ah, just found a brief reference to it in Kildea's biography. It was reported by Etienne Amyot, a programme planner at the time. Britten apparently had a low opinion of the BBC's commitment to high art, and thought the new Third Progrmma would be no different.

[kuligin]

[QUOTE=Mary Chambers;602525]Nor me. I am constantly fascinated by how differently people hear things. We can never know exactly what someone else hears.

How very true, I am always surprised when people say they do not like a particular form, lieder or chamber music, to me its a mystery how one can admire Schubert's piano music and not his songs or vice versa.

With individual composers it is easier I think, although I pride myself on my catholic and impeccable taste there area few I really cannot stand, I don't want to hear another note of Puccini please.

Britten is a very interesting to me, I reacted against his music in the 70s when he was so dominate. I remember Owen Wingrave being called a "masterpiece" before it had been performed. I thought Britten was dull and conservative, I had just discovered Bartok Berg and Stravinsky! I still prefer their music but there now a number of Britten works I really like, from all periods, Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge to Death of St Narcissus and a number from all periods that I dont Spring Symphony and St Nicholas come to mind. It was strange listening to the end of Peter Grimes today, as in the same work within moments there were passages that deeply moved me and parts which I found unappealing, and I really dont like it in opera when at a climatic moment a character speaks.

I always start from the premise that the composer is right and I am cloth eared so perhaps I may still hear the light.

[ardcarp]

I remember Owen Wingrave being called a "masterpiece" before it had been performed.

Yes, I remember its TV debut, being very bored by it, and hoping newcomers to Britten wouldn't be put off by it.

I may still hear the light

I diagnose a severe case of synaesthesia!

[Cockney Sparrow]

I've just watched a July,'99 off-air video of Britten's Serenade... in the Masterworks, Six Pieces of Britain series.....

I do wish they would repeat that series - Friday Night on BBC 4 - come on Controller of Music ! I would love to be able to see that programme, and certainly the Walton (Belshazzar) and Vaughan-Williams (Tallis Fantasia, Gloucester Cathedral) as well. I suppose compared to the "Good Old Days" which surely comes free of repeat fees, it would be much more expensive.

[Mary Chambers]

Yes, I remember its TV debut, being very bored by it, and hoping newcomers to Britten wouldn't be put off by it.

I still don't like it; the only Britten opera I don't enjoy.

[Tony Halstead]

Try listening to today's edition in which the Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings was featured. It was magnificent! Not Pears, however but Robert Tear. Quite early on in his career, I recall, he began to cultivate the Pears vocal technique which involves a somewhat 'closed throat' style of delivery, but which allows terrific control over a wide range of expression and dynamics. This was demonstrated in spades today. RT died a few years ago, sadly, but I don't think any other tenor has interpreted Britten/Pears roles so successfully. (All IMVHO of course.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08c2w58

...about 32mins 30 from start.

I hope I may be forgiven for lapsing into ‘autobiographical mode’ in the course of this posting. As a horn player who has been lucky enough to play ‘in concert’ more Mozart and Richard Strauss concertos ‘than I care to remember’ in the course of a 50+ year career, as well as the occasional Haydn or Weber concerto, I can honestly say that the Britten ‘Serenade’ has been the most meaningful piece of ‘horn music’ that I have ever been privileged to perform. But of course it certainly isn’t just ‘horn music’, it is a deeply collaborative work in which the horn player is, apart from in the Prologue and Epilogue, at best a commentator, an observer and, hopefully, an ‘enhancer’ of the singer’s art. At worst, an inept and/ or under-prepared horn player can ruin the piece.

The very first time that I was totally ‘bowled over’ by the Serenade was in about 1965, my 3rd year at the old RMCM (now RNCM) when I heard Gerald English and Ifor James perform it.
Only 3 years later I was fortunate enough to ‘have a go at it’ for the very first time, as horn soloist in a ‘BBC Radio 3 Studio recording’ with the wonderful Robert Tear and the BBC SSO, conducted by James Loughran.
If that had been a public concert it would have been ‘panned’ by the critics (if any had bothered to attend) because I had unfortunately misjudged how very difficult the horn part is, and so I played it rather badly!
Bob Tear, quite apart from singing magnificently, was absolutely lovely and supportive, saying to me ‘all horn players get those bits wrong’ and of course this cheered me up, if only temporarily!

Subsequently, during the course of my 14 years as principal horn of the E.C.O. I was privileged to perform the Serenade many times with Bob Tear and Anthony Rolfe Johnson, as well as with Clifford Hughes and Neil Mackie outside of the ECO connection.

In 1989 my long-standing hope / wish to perform or even record the Serenade with Gerald English came to an end when I was asked by the ‘Nimbus’ company to record it with the American tenor Jerry Hadley. This proved to be hugely uplifting! It was a revelation to hear a real ‘bel canto singer with heft’ enjoying Britten, a very refreshing and valid change from the ‘English tenor’ style. But 18 years later, what a desperately sad thing it was, in 2007, to hear that Jerry had committed suicide.

My final ‘goodbye’ to the Serenade came about 20 years ago when Bob Tear phoned me and asked me to play as soloist in a couple of concerts with ‘The Orchestra of the Mill’ (based in Wigan, Lancashire, and of which he was their principal guest conductor!) in which he wanted me to play not only the Britten Serenade, but also the Richard Strauss 1st horn concerto, in the 2nd half of the concert. When I asked him WHY BOTH?… he said “ ‘I’ve always loved the Strauss 1st horn concerto and have always wanted to conduct it!” In the event he conducted it beautifully, but wisely concentrated only on singing in the Serenade, which was expertly conducted by Peter Donohoe.

My absolute favourite and, IMV, the greatest recording of the Serenade is the Pears/ Brain one made in about 1952-1953 by Decca, conducted not by Britten but by Eugene Goossens. Dennis had recently switched his allegiance from the French to the German horn, and his contribution is audibly superior to that in the earlier recording with the Boyd Neel orchestra, on which he played a 19th century French piston horn with a rather thin and ‘pinched’ sound. However, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and I know that several colleagues prefer Dennis’s tone on that 1940s recording.
Dennis’s sound on this 1952-53 recording is incomparable IMV, almost unbelievably round and suave except for, of course, his brassily intense tone in the ‘Dirge’. Peter Pears is on absolutely top form and IMV this recorded version represents both artists performing at the absolute ‘pinnacle’ of their art.
NB: avoid the later Decca ‘Eclipse’ LP with ‘artificial stereo’ which is a woolly and boomy travesty of the superb 'mono' sound on the original ‘AXL’ LP.

Postscript: ‘Runner up’ must surely be a ‘tie’ between the other two recordings that I often listen to apart from the above Pears/ Brain:
Pears/ Tuckwell/ Britten / Decca; and Tear/ Clevenger/ Giulini/ DG which we heard this week on R3.

[Mary Chambers]

That's all very interesting, tony. How I envy you! I agree with your choice of recordings, too.

I wa first bowled over by the Serenade when I was at university. It was a student performance, but seemed to me then quite perfect. I went out and bought the Pears/Tuckwell recording on LP. I've still got it several decades later! If I had to pick one Britten work for my desert island - which would be very difficult - I'd go for the Serenade.

[ardcarp]

Thanks for that from me too, Tony. I was especially intrigued to hear of Gerald English. I didn't know he had sung the Serenade. He was one of my favourite tenors back along, with a very natural style of voice-production...and very different from Pears. He went to live abroad some time ago but (if I may be allowed a little personal note too) he is now back in England, living just around the corner from me. I am pleased to be able to chat with this nonagenarian about times past. I'll mention The Serenade when I next see him.