Classical Music

Classical Music

BRITTEN Solo Cello Suites: Nos. 1–3 • Daniel Müller-Schott (vc) • ORFEO C 835 111 A (70:33)

Next to Bach’s six, there are probably no greater challenges to the art of the cello than the three suites for solo cello of Benjamin Britten, even considering those by Hindemith and Reger. Britten had wanted to compose six but died before he could write more than three. No matter; these are major pieces, and it is good to see them coming more into their own with a number of recent recordings of all or some of them.

We are told that it was hearing Rostropovich play the first Shostakovich cello concerto in 1960 that impelled Britten to write a sonata for him, which they performed the following year, and to write the Cello Symphony in 1963. The three suites followed in 1964, 1967, and 1971. It is customary to grant Rostropovich authority in the performance of the first two suites (he never recorded the third), though he himself had some later reservations about his recording of the first, because he thought he played it so much better later. But these suites have now become the province of young cellists and that’s a good thing.

Daniel Müller-Schott has all the technical skills necessary (a phenomenal pp , for instance). He takes a forthright approach to the first suite. The opening Canto is firmly stated and adumbrates what follows. His performance sounds to me more a matter of statements about than a lyrical exploration of Britten’s voice. On the whole, he seems much more comfortable in the second suite, though the concluding Ciaccona occasionally loses its sense of line. The third suite, however, starts off with a wonderfully caressing Lento, and Müller-Schott is completely engaged with what follows. No recording of Bach’s or Britten’s suites, however good, and this is certainly a good one, can take the place of hearing them live.

This recording is certainly to be recommended and it gets better as it goes on. Müller-Schott has a slightly grainy sound and this fits his approach. He has clearly taken to heart Leonard Bernstein’s view of Britten’s music that “if you really hear it, not just listen to it superficially, you become aware of something very dark.” These are dark recordings, indeed. This is not the only view possible of these suites, however, and I am also much taken with the more lyrical one by Tim Hugh (Naxos), a recording that seems to have slipped past us, and Peter Wispelwey has a recent (2010) live recording of the first suite that is wonderful to hear (Onyx). These are good times for Britten’s response to Bach.

FANFARE: Alan Swanson

Includes world premiere recordings!

Every year, the International Competition of Orléans showcases repertoire from the early 20th century to our time, performed by the younger generation. French pianist Lorenzo Soulès, winner of the 2022 edition, presents on this b•records disc the results of his quest for the French sound from Claude Debussy to Philippe Manoury, whose two Études, commissioned specifically for the competition, are recorded here for the first time.

'A disc of exceptional quality, reinforcing The Sixteen's reputation as one of the finest choirs of our day.' Gramophone "The Sixteen perform Britten's virtuosic masterpiece with fearsome accuracy and a luxurious sound." Classic FM Magazine "Britten's mastery for writing for unaccompanied chorus is here demonstrated in fine performances..." BBC Music Magazine This superb collection, released in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Britten's birth, features all three of The Sixteen's celebrated Britten recordings. Arguably the most famous British composer of the 20th century, Benjamin Britten possessed a formidable talent and distinctive style. His remarkable career spanned over 40 years and this collection of choral works features a fascinating selection of music from throughout his life. Works include Hymn to the Virgin, a piece originally conceived during his school days; A Boy was Born which first brought him to the public's attention; the much-loved A Ceremony of Carols - a masterpiece composed on board ship as Britten returned to England from the USA in 1942; and the Choral Dances from 'Gloriana' with tenor soloist Ian Partridge. A Ceremony of Carols won a coveted Deutsche Schallplattenkritik when first released.

The outstanding English composer working in the mid-20th century, Benjamin Britten won a significant international reputation, whilst remaining thoroughly English in inspiration.

A dark and fantastic imagination engaged.

Lees was born in Manchuria but his family moved to San Francisco when he was only eighteen months old. He became an American citizen in 1931. His teachers included Halsey Stevens, Ingolf Dahl and George Antheil. There are five symphonies, the Fourth of which, Memorial Candles, is on Naxos. Lees has written many other works including a slew of concertos. I should mention the ones for horn and violin. His Third Piano Concerto was recently premiered by Ian Hobson in Florida. Hobson has also recorded his Fourth Piano Sonata and Second Piano Concerto on Albany.

Lees' Toccata inhabits a world of dissonant angularity parallel with that of the Ramey works also on Toccata - a sort of feral pianola effect. The Six Ornamental Etudes are more varied in effect than the Ramey sequences. From that viewpoint Lees's imaginative palette is more capacious. The first of the Three Preludes is an essay in grand swirling defiance. The second is sombre with a discordant filigree for the right hand. The third has the all the pell-mell pianola torque of the Toccata on the first track. The single movement Sonata Breve is serious and dark-browed. There is an element of fantasy here but always tempered by danger. The three movements of Odyssey are respectively from 1971, 1986 and 2005. The first was written for John Ogdon and is angular in a way that often suggests Shostakovich. The second Odyssey movement is full of brooding and discordant outbursts and purposeful surly energy. This is also felt in a few jazzy passages along the way. It was commissioned by the US Information Agency. The final Odyssey is the most recent and has the feel of a journey into a threatening and fantastic land with vistas of unearthly beauty along the way. For all its angularity and occasional dissonance this is a fascinating piece of mercurial mood-swings and descriptive Lisztian power. Mention of Ogdon earlier on reminds me that the torrential power of some of Lees' writing as represented on this disc might almost have been cousins to the Ogdon-propelled Mennin Piano Concerto once recorded on CRI.

Toccata issued its second Ramey volume in the same month as this Benjamin Lees recital.

Lees engages a dark and fantastic imagination.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Praise for Chloë Hanslip's confident excursion into unfamiliar territory

-- Gramophone [4/2008]

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Benjamin Louis Paul Godard, the son of a businessman, was born in Paris on 18th August, 1849. A child prodigy on the violin, Godard studied with Richard Hammer and later Henri Vieuxtemps. At the age of fourteen (some sources say when he was ten) Godard was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire and studied composition under Henri Reber. His first published work was a violin sonata written when he was sixteen. In the mid-1860s he twice competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome. From this time forward Godard dedicated himself to composition, first writing chamber music (he played viola in several chamber music societies), and numerous piano pieces. He was especially inspired by the music of Robert Schumann, and orchestrated Schumann’s Kinderscenen in 1876. In 1878 his Le Tasse was a joint winner of the prize for musical composition given by the city of Paris. Le Tasse is a three-part dramatic symphony with soli and chorus based on a poem of Charles Grandmougins, which was in turn based on The Damnation of Faust. In succeeding years Godard composed an enormous amount of music, including three programme symphonies (Symphonie Gothique, Symphonie Orientale, and Symphonie Légendaire), three string quartets, four violin sonatas, a cello sonata, two piano trios, numerous piano pieces, violin and piano concertos, various orchestral works, and over a hundred songs. Godard is chiefly remembered for his operas. His first opera, Les bijoux de Jeanette, was produced in 1878; Pedro de Zalamea followed in 1884. His next opera, Jocelyn, based on a poem of Lamartine, appeared in 1888. Its fame rests mainly on the well-known Berceuse, which has been arranged for numerous combinations of instruments and/or voices and remains Godard’s most familiar work. It has been performed by Jussi Björling, John McCormack (in English translation as “Angels Guard Thee” and with the violin accompaniment of Fritz Kreisler), Alma Gluck, Pablo Casals, the Eroica Trio, and many others. Godard’s operatic output also included Dante et Béatrice (1890), Jeanne d’Arc (1891), and La Vivandière (1895; unfinished at his death and completed by Paul Vidal). The conductor Jules Étienne Pasdeloup admired Godard’s music and allowed Godard to conduct many of his own premières. After Pasdeloup’s retirement, Godard created theConcerts Modernes in an attempt to continue Pasdeloup’s Concerts Populaires , but this lasted only one season (October 1885 – April 1886). In 1887 he was appointed a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1889 was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur. Godard died of tuberculosis at Cannes on 10th January, 1895.

Godard’s was unquestionably a romantic temperament, though more closely aligned with the romanticism of the mid-nineteenth century than with Wagner and Tchaikovsky; his talent has been compared with the facility and manner of Saint-Saëns. His respect and admiration for Robert Schumann has already been noted, as has his tutelage under Henri Vieuxtemps, one of the great romantic violinist-composers of the nineteenth century. Godard’s music has sometimes been criticized for superficiality and “over-hastiness”, and truly he composed at a prodigious pace, reaching Opus 100 in 1886 while still in his thirties. In romantic fashion his symphonies are “named”, and his operas contain the soaring melody and romantic sensibility expected of romantic opera, though his stage works quickly fell out of favour. Among his operas, the unfinished opéra comique La Vivandière had the greatest success. Godard’s music follows the traditions of Mendelssohn and Schumann, and he had little sympathy for the overblown rhetoric of Wagner, especially since, being of Jewish extraction, he disliked Wagner’s anti- Semitism. Like the early romantics Godard excelled in small forms. The nineteenth-century scholar Hervey wrote that “Godard is perhaps greater in small things than he is in large. There is an exquisite charm in some of his songs … whilst many of his piano pieces have a savour all their own.” A new appreciation for Godard’s achievement in small pieces, once dismissed as salon music, has grown in recent years. Godard’s achievement is best summed up as “traditional romantic”.

While focusing much of his compositional career on other forms and instruments such as opera, songs, and piano pieces, Godard did not neglect the instrument on which he had excelled as a youth. His violin concertos are among his very best works and display both inventiveness and élan. The Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 131, is in the traditional three movements. The opening Allegro moderato features alternating chords by soloist and orchestra from the first measure; this gesture is fleshed out with scale runs by the soloist and snatches of a motif consisting of a half note and triplets. The main lyric theme enters after a ritardando; this is worked to a climax and repeated forte. After a brief orchestral statement, the soloist launches into a cadenza featuring double, triple, and quadruple stops as well as a glissando run. The thematic materials are reworked and the movement ends with the usual flourish. The following Adagio quasi andante features a steady triplet orchestral accompaniment underneath the main lyric melody, at first alluded to by solo horn, and then taken up fully by solo violinist. The contrasting midsection, in 6/8 time rather than the 4/4 of the movement’s beginning, contains double-stopping and short runs, then slowly returns to the 4/4 main lyric material and the steady triplet accompaniment, which accompaniment is finally discarded in the coda. The final Allegro non troppo is a bouncy movement in 2/4 time, a delightful rondo romp from beginning to end.

The Concerto Romantique, Op. 35, is a much earlier work and in some ways more experimental. Hervey wrote that in the Concerto Romantique Godard’s talent found “its true expression. The composer of these works is in the full force of his powers, and it is not too much to state the belief that he has yet much to say”. Unfortunately Hervey’s book was published in 1894, just months before Godard’s untimely death. The first unorthodox feature of this concerto is that it has four movements instead of the usual three. The first movement, marked Allegro moderato, while of a more dramatic character than the other movements, is relatively brief for an opening movement, which tend to be the “heaviest” and longest movement. After a sixteen-measure orchestral introduction, the soloist enters fortissimo with a highly accented martial theme in double stops. After an orchestral interlude, the violin sings a lyric theme; these materials eventually lead to a section marked Recitativo, which is in the nature of an accompanied cadenza. A coda brings the movement to a close. The graceful Adagio non troppo is connected to the following Canzonetta, marked Allegro moderato, by a short improvisatory section. This is Godard’s most famous concerto movement, and until the mid-twentieth-century was often published by itself or in collections in violin and piano arrangement. It is a delicate and highly accented song, only briefly discarding its gossamer character for more sustained lyricism. The final Allegro molto opens with a dramatic statement in the orchestra; the soloist enters with a theme marked Agitato ed appassionato molto. This theme is interspersed with passage-work, some of scherzo-like character. The soloist’s final peroration features double-stops and the movement ends with appropriate high spirits.

The atmospheric Scènes Poétiques for Orchestra, Op. 46, contains four short bucolic pieces depicting various outdoor scenes: Dans les bois (In the woods), Dans les champs (In the fields), Sur la montagne (On the mountain), and the bustling Au village (In the village).

Bruce R. Schueneman

Though he died in his mid-forties Benjamin Godard, a child prodigy who had entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, wrote prolifically in almost all genres. Stylistically he adhered to models such as Schumann and Chopin rather than aligning himself with Wagner, as did many of his French contemporaries. His piano works are gracious and witty, sometimes spiced with unusual harmonies, and balance perfectly the differing demands of the salon and the concert hall. Spanning the breadth of Benjamin Godard's compositional life this selection of piano music includes the gracious and warm Nocturnes, which show some Chopin influence, and the Trois Fragments Po�tiques, Op.13 with their long-spun lyrical melodies. His sparkling vivacity and more virtuosic side can be savored in the late Fantaisie en trois parties, Op. 143.

Benjamin Godard was regarded as one of the most promising young composers in France but, standing firm against the 'Wagner fever' of his contemporaries, his music fell out of favor after his untimely death. Most of his piano works are character pieces such as the descriptions of water in Sur la Mer. This is a feature shared by the Schumann-like fairies and sprites of the Sonate Fantastique, contrasting with the powerful virtuoso abstraction of the Second Sonata.

“Written on Skin” is a psychologically gripping, emotionally heart-pounding and viscerally satisfying drama that throws up moral questions that linger long after its 90-minute run. -- NEW YORK TIMES

Remarkable, challenging music in outstanding performances - highly recommended.

I first became acquainted with the music of George Benjamin through another Nimbus disc, NI5505. Sudden Time features on that disc too, but it was a vocal piece from 1990 that particularly struck me, Upon Silence. For mezzo-soprano and ensemble of viols, and composed for the group Fretwork, this is a remarkable setting of W. B. Yeats’ poem Long-Legged Fly. The work achieves what might be thought impossible, setting a near-perfect text in a totally unexpected and apparently unsuited musical idiom, whilst not only complementing it, but extending and transforming it in such a way that the musical setting becomes quite another work of art, leaving the original poem intact and undisturbed, available to the reader just as before. Fretwork play wonderfully – and the disc includes a second performance of the same work in an adaptation for seven strings – but I was especially in awe, and am still, at the astonishing, stunning performance by Susan Bickley.
 
The rest of that disc is taken up by instrumental and orchestral music, and it took me much longer to come to terms with these. Vocal music, in any event, given the presence of text, is probably easier to appreciate than purely instrumental music, and the other works certainly revealed their secrets more slowly, and required more effort on my part. But the effort was more than justified, as it also was with the present disc. George Benjamin’s music is exquisite, perfectly fashioned, like jewels, but not always easy on the ear, and not always easy to fathom.
 
The earliest work here, At First Light, is written for an ensemble of fourteen players. Such is the acuity of the composer’s ear, however, that the listener is amazed at the variety of colour achieved. The work begins in near-inaudibility, and the tiny first movement is composed of fragments, scraps of ideas, long held notes and twitters, that never really blend into anything tangible. The other movements are longer, the second more dramatic, the third calm, with fragments of melody and ravishing instrumental sonorities. But this is music with few audible signposts. Sudden Time confirms that impression. This is a work for large orchestra, but there is very little in the way of melodic writing, little to latch on to, being composed instead of fragments once again, moments of harmony and ever-changing sonorities. There’s not much sense of pulse or tempo either, the overall feeling being of music which is slow, though emphatically not static. On the other hand there is certainly a sense of progression – in terms of time – in the last third of the piece, and it closes with an extended melodic passage for solo violin, though I think it would take a little while to learn to whistle it. The ending is very abrupt. The music simply stops.
 
Palimpsests, of which this is the first recording, opens with what the notes refer to as “an antique-sounding canzonetta” played by a choir of clarinets, antique-sounding in the sense that Berg’s harmonisation of the Bach choral in his Violin Concerto is antique sounding. This work features rather more surface drama than the earlier two, with considerably more louder and faster-moving music and a general feeling that the writing is more extended, less fragmentary. The ending, uniquely of the four pieces, is loud. The final work on the disc, Olicantus, was written as a “surprise fiftieth birthday present for composer-conductor Oliver Knussen”, though any idea of levity that might be encouraged by the pun in the title is dashed when one hears this sombre piece, composed for fifteen players of low-pitched instruments, anything but celebratory, but of a striking, grave beauty.
 
Oliver Knussen conducts the short piece dedicated to him, the composer the others, and it is difficult to imagine how the performances could be any finer. These musicians are, in short, perfect advocates for this remarkable repertoire. The recorded sound is excellent, and although these are live performances the disc is not marred by applause. The booklet notes, by Stephen Walsh, are very erudite and deal extensively with what might be termed the philosophical aspects of the music. As such they are not much help as a listening guide, but it is difficult to imagine how any words might be. But don’t be put off. Try this disc for yourself, with open ears and an open mind.
 
-- William Hedley, MusicWeb International  

"This music has the power to connect the avant-garde with the lost paradise of tonality,’ said Robin Holloway once about Britten. He might have been talking about this Blake set, a standout in Britten’s still often underrated output of the 1960s, written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau after his contribution to the War Requiem.

Putting this new Roderick Williams recording immediately up against the composer and Fischer-Dieskau is like going from hymns ancient to hymns modern. Williams finds an ideal emotional stance—involved, totally word-conscious but never melodramatic…as a recorded recital, Williams—and Burnside, who is similarly colourful but keeps an interpretative distance from pumping up the text—have created an outstanding achievement, one to set alongside the Gerald Finley/Julius Drake disc. Their remaining items, including Tit for Tat—Britten’s ‘reissue’ of early 1929-31 Walter de la Mare settings—shine in a similar way. The Potton Hall recording is clean and clear with excellent instrument/voice balance."

-- Mike Ashman, Gramophone [6/2012]

This disc couples a masterpiece from Britten’s maturity and songs written in his youth. The latter were revived and gathered together as a set in his later years. Britten wrote very little for baritone, but I do think it a pity that rather than seek an interesting work by another composer to complement these two works, it was decided to complete the disc with folk-songs. Beautiful though these arrangements are, many collectors will have quite enough Oliver Cromwells and Little Sir Williams on the shelves, thank you. They are, however, beautifully sung here. There is a very brisk Plough Boy, and Roderick Williams tones in his voice beautifully for the gentler numbers. Ca’ the yowes, a minor masterpiece, is magnificently grand. Overall, the delivery is simple, neither folk-song nor art-song, and refreshingly avoiding the coy or arch in the likes of The foggy, foggy dew. No, Williams presents them unadorned, and with a beautiful legato line, as a series of lovely tunes with inventive and striking accompaniments. Others, some of whom set them up as quasi-operatic scenes, do inject more life into some of the songs, not always to their advantage.
 
Tit for Tat, a set of five short songs to poems by Walter de la Mare, was first performed in 1969 by John Shirley-Quirk with the composer at the piano. I have in my head the sound of Shirley-Quirk singing these songs, but can’t for the life of me remember where or when it comes from. The songs were written when Britten was in his teens, and he had only recently gathered them together and, with minimal editing, prepared them for publication. They are accomplished works that can, on the whole, be enjoyed without making allowances for the composer’s age. There is not the psychological insight - neither into the poems nor into the mind of the listener - that you find in the mature composer’s vocal music. Nor is the piano part so developed. Listen however to the second song, “Autumn”: everything that was to come is there in embryonic form. It would be easy to exaggerate the claims of these songs, but presented so cleanly and with such understanding as do Williams and his superb pianist, Iain Burnside, they make just the effect the mature composer surely intended.
 
Philip Lancaster’s booklet essay casts plenty of light on the programme. Walter de la Mare’s poems are sadly not given, but the folk-song texts do appear, as do the texts of the masterly Songs and Proverbs of William Blake. This work was composed for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and is dedicated to him. The dedication reads “For Dieter: the past and the future. It is a proper, integrated song-cycle, but which is sung without a break. Poems and proverbs alternate, creating a continuous text which was chosen and arranged in order by Peter Pears, no doubt with input from the composer. Words and music combine to create a cycle that maintains a single mood throughout its length, one of melancholy observation. In his book Britten, Voice and Piano, Stephen Johnson recounts how the relationship between Fischer-Dieskau and Britten, though nourished by mutual admiration, was not an easy one. The sessions for their Decca recording of December 1965 were by all accounts particularly fraught, but this is hardly audible in the finished result, which is a performance of extraordinary mastery. Fischer-Dieskau is magnificent, and the composer’s piano playing is miraculous. Listen, for example, in the ppp quavers that introduce A Poison Tree, how he manages to conceal the inconvenient fact that a piano works by hammers striking on keys. This is the kind of piano playing that prompted Gerald Moore, in his book Am I Too Loud?, to proclaim Britten as “the world’s greatest living accompanist”. Britten’s recorded legacy is essential for any admirer of his work, but happily the era is now long gone when attempts by other performers to stamp their own personality on the music seemed like an affront to the composer’s memory. Iain Burnside is outstandingly fine on this disc. It seems almost insulting to state that his playing is technically impeccable, but I do state it, whilst adding that he is profoundly in tune with the music and with the singer’s needs. Roderick Williams gives a performance of great vision, beautifully sung, that will satisfy any listener who discovers the work from this performance. In general, Fischer-Dieskau employs a wider range of vocal colour that allows him, in The ChimneySweeper, for example, to play the part of the oppressed child with remarkable vividness. Another example would be at the line “And blights with plagues the marriage hearse” in London, where Williams doesn’t really match Fischer-Dieskau’s disillusioned bitterness. Williams is slower, too, the song hardly reflecting the composer’s marking of “Very agitated”. If this gives the impression that the reading is a pale one, the opposite is the case. There is a suggestion of whimsy in Fischer-Dieskau’s performance of The Fly that is absent in Williams’ reading, and Williams launches Ah! Sun-flower with a superb crescendo barely observed by Fischer-Dieskau. The end of the work, too, is very fine indeed from both artists, not quite resigned, not quite hopeless.
 
-- William Hedley , MusicWeb International

Classical Music

BRITTEN War Requiem • Paul McCreesh, cond; Susan Gritton (sop); John Mark Ainsley (ten); Christopher Maltman (bar); Gabrieli Young Singers’ Scheme; Trebles of the Ch of New College Oxford; Wroclaw P Ch; Gabrieli Consort & Players • SIGNUM 340 (2 CDs: 84: 05)


Time was when Paul McCreesh was considered a specialist—and a brilliant one—in the Baroque and Classical periods, primarily in operas and liturgical choral works. In the last two years, however, he has released four extraordinary recordings, three of which might seem, at least to the record collector, to be outside his domain: the Berlioz Grande Messe des Morts , Mendelssohn’s Elijah , and a collection of British choral works on loss and consolation, A Song of Farewell , featuring the Herbert Howells Requiem. (The only exception is a newly refined conjectural reconstruction of the 1595 coronation service for Doge Marino Grimani in Venice.) Now, for the Benjamin Britten centennial, he has produced a new studio recording of the incomparable War Requiem . Each of these large scale undertaking is an outgrowth of McCreesh’s association with the International Festival of Oratorio and Cantata Music in Wroclaw, Poland (Wratislavia Cantans) and each employs not only a much augmented Gabrieli Consort and Players, but also the very fine Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir. Those familiar with McCreesh’s earlier masterful shaping of the large musical canvasses of Berlioz and Mendelssohn with his hundreds of performers will know exactly what to expect here.


And in fact, from the hushed suspense of the opening of the Requiem aeternam , to the more gentle than usual beginning to an extraordinarily powerful Dies irae , on to a more accurate than typical Sed signifier sanctus Michael , and an explosive Hosanna in excelsis , McCreesh and his 175-voice adult choir combine huge dynamic range with precision and flawless balance, perfect intonation, and great depth and variety of tone. The equally fine youth choir is made up of trebles from the Choir of New College Oxford, as well as choirs from McCreesh’s educational project, the Gabrieli Young Singers’ Scheme: Chethams Chamber Choir, North East Youth Chorale, Taplow Youth Choir, and Ulster Youth Chamber Choir. From its first appearance in a perfectly judged halo of resonance, the distanced body of treble voices is touchingly angelic.


The full orchestral forces make an awesome commotion in all the right places, the brass especially impressive in the various apocalypses and dramatic explosions; the one with organ near the end of the Libera me gave me chills. However, the chamber music, with an ensemble of superb soloists, lingers just as long in memory, aided as they are by McCreesh’s willingness to suspend forward momentum, to focus more than customary attention on details in the settings of Owen’s poems. I do not know a recording that gives greater support to the soloists than this.


These soloists know how to use the opportunities afforded them. McCreesh opts for an all-British trio, rather than continuing the symbolic use of English, German, and Russian soloists. More than many tenor soloists, John Mark Ainsley manages to break the hold of the Peter Pears tradition in the solos, while still being true to the substance of the work. He sings “One ever hangs” with breathtaking beauty of tone, and finds great poignancy and palpable fury in “Move him into the sun.” Baritone Christopher Maltman does the same in “Bugles sang,” sounding little like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau but matching him in text pointing and intelligence of phrasing, here and in a chillingly scornful “Be slowly lifted up.” Together, they are arresting in “So Abram rose,” aided by McCreesh’s perceptive pacing, as they had been in the earlier sardonic “Out there, we’ve walked.” Susan Gritton is not as piercingly imperious as Galina Vishnevskaya in the Sanctus or Libera me , but the beauty of her voice in the Benedictus and the concluding In paradisum is more than ample compensation. The two male soloists outdo themselves in the concluding scena, “It seemed that out of battle I escaped,” and if “Let us sleep now” does not reduce you to tears, nothing in music can.


My two small complaints seem almost churlish in the face of such perfection: first, the books in which this and all of McCreesh’s Signum/Winged Lion releases are issued are quite beautifully done—texts, intelligent notes, and striking illustrations—but the endsheet sleeves invite scratches and, as in my case, surface scuffs. There must certainly be a better way. The second is the decision to provide only six tracks for the entire work, one at each of the major divisions of the Mass. Maybe only critics making comparisons care, but it would have been simple to add more.


But enough, the essential question is, does this new recording supplant Britten’s own with the soloists for whom he wrote the work? Britten was a master conductor of his own music, so almost inevitably the answer is, well … no. And yet, so powerful is McCreesh’s performance, so insightful the interpretive choices, so fine the soloists, and so clear and dynamic the recording, it would be hard indeed to have to choose between this and the original. Adding to the dilemma, Decca has just remastered the 1963 Britten recording from the master tapes—described as increasingly fragile—for its comprehensive anniversary issue and has made yet another incremental improvement in the transfer of the always fine Culshaw production. I recommend having both in the collection—this is, after all, no different than having multiple Beethoven symphony sets—and for the truly devoted, add Noseda’s hyper-dramatic performance on LSO Live and Rilling’s on Hänssler. There are other fine performances of this masterpiece, but these four—and definitely this new one—now define summa cum laude.

FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames