Britten: String Quartet No. 3 & Simple Symphony

Winter Words is the solo debut release by American tenor Nicholas Phan. The recording was made in the wake of a recital tour in 2010-11 which culminated in his Carnegie debut at Weill Hall. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and an alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera studio Nick has performed with the opera companies of Los Angeles and Seattle, symphony orchestras of Atlanta, St. Louis and San Francisco, and the Marlboro, Ravinia and Edinburgh Festivals, among others. He sang in Stravinsky's Pulcinella with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez which was nominated for a Grammy Award. Nick presents a deeply personal perspective of Britten's music, encompassing his own performing experiences to audience reaction. He says: "I've been a fan of Britten since playing his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra with my youth orchestra in Detroit as a teenage violinist. But my great devotion to his music increased to an obsession when an excellent pianist and good friend asked if I'd perform with her at a small university in Missouri. She suggested Winter Words, saying, "I think these would sound really great in your voice, and I've wanted to play them for ages, so indulge me." I researched and played through Britten's settings of Hardy's poems and before long, I was hooked." Approaching the performance in a small Midwestern town with some trepidation ("how would they react?"), Nick describes the audience's overwhelmingly positive response: "my favourite piece on the program ... the most lasting impression." Such is the enduring quality of Britten's sophisticated yet direct song writing, of which Nick is a leading torch-bearer. critical acclaim for Nicholas Phan "took hold of the music with unerring musicality, precise diction, and conversational command." - The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross "an excellent young singer ... more importantly he penetrates deeply into the inner drama" - Boston Globe "Vocally and dramatically at the level of the finest international artists." - Chicago Sun Times

BRITTEN: Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20 / 4 Sea Interludes

BRITTEN: Cello Suites Nos. 1-3

Britten: War Requiem

Britten: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 - 3 Divertimenti

Britten: Albert Herring

Classical Music

This collection of works for string orchestra combines two of Britten's first masterpieces, Simple Symphony and the Frank Bridge Variations, with the even earlier Elegy for Strings - recorded here for the first time - and Two Portraits, composed between the ages of 14-16. Directed by the Norwegian violinist Terje Tonnesen, the Swedish string ensemble Camerata Nordica performs this program with an engaging directness and striking virtuosity - qualities which no doubt contributed to the team being entrusted by the Britten-Pears Foundation with making the world premiere recording of the Elegy, as well as giving it's first public performance during the 2013 BBC Proms.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

For the last of their three Britten discs, the British Emperor Quartet have gathered five of his earliest works, including the String Quartet in F and the Simple Symphony. These works demonstrate the young Britten’s developing personal style, beyond the influences of his teacher Frank Bridge as well as Bartók and Schoenberg. In 1930, these very influences prompted his most intensely progressive work, Quartettino, unpublished and unperformed until after his death. Retreating somewhat from its terse language, he only returned to the quartet medium to compose his three later, numbered quartets.

Classical Music