800 liters of water, two sails, thirty pulleys, sixty hammocks : for the Bicentenary of the Teatro Real of Madrid, Deborah Warner coined a colossal production of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd. “Oh, what have I done?” Captain Edward Fairfax Vere, former commander of the H.M.S. Indomitable asks himself with horror at the beginning of the opera, before recounting the tragic events that took place aboard his ship in 1797. The story revolves around a young model sailor, Billy Budd, and John Claggart, the unscrupulous master-at-arms obsessed and crazed by Billy’s angelic beauty; and follows the characters in their fall down to the most infernal depths of perversion and psychosis, exploring the themes of innocence, culpability, individual responsibility and justice. In this ambiguous and symbolic tale, drawn from Herman Melville’s last masterpiece, the composer Benjamin Britten, who returns for the occasion to symphonic opera and its infinite possibilities, unsettles and disturbs us by revealing the complexity and universality of human experience. Far from writing the characters as allegories of Good and Evil, the opera shows us instead the remorseless logic followed by the surge of one’s darkest desires. But in this opera dominated by masculinity, Deborah Warner goes beyond the story of violence, jealousy and hatred and chooses to focus instead on the collateral beauty produced by comradeship, friendship and forgiveness. Tenor Jacques Imbrailo, who knows the title role perfectly, delivers a stunning rendition of the young sailor’s part, while British singers Toby Spence and Brindley Sherratt provide solid interpretations of Captain “Starry” Vere and of John Claggart. In the pit, Ivor Bolton masterfully deploys, along with the Orchestra of the Teatro Real, all the energy and power of Britten’s fifth opera.

800 liters of water, two sails, thirty pulleys, sixty hammocks : for the Bicentenary of the Teatro Real of Madrid, Deborah Warner coined a colossal production of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd. "Oh, what have I done?" Captain Edward Fairfax Vere, former commander of the H.M.S. Indomitable asks himself with horror at the beginning of the opera, before recounting the tragic events that took place aboard his ship in 1797. The story revolves around a young model sailor, Billy Budd, and John Claggart, the unscrupulous master-at-arms obsessed and crazed by Billy's angelic beauty; and follows the characters in their fall down to the most infernal depths of perversion and psychosis, exploring the themes of innocence, culpability, individual responsibility and justice. In this ambiguous and symbolic tale, drawn from Herman Melville's last masterpiece, the composer Benjamin Britten, who returns for the occasion to symphonic opera and it's infinite possibilities, unsettles and disturbs us by revealing the complexity and universality of human experience. Far from writing the characters as allegories of Good and Evil, the opera shows us instead the remorseless logic followed by the surge of one's darkest desires. But in this opera dominated by masculinity, Deborah Warner goes beyond the story of violence, jealousy and hatred and chooses to focus instead on the collateral beauty produced by comradeship, friendship and forgiveness. Tenor Jacques Imbrailo, who knows the title role perfectly, delivers a stunning rendition of the young sailor's part, while British singers Toby Spence and Brindley Sherratt provide solid interpretations of Captain "Starry" Vere and of John Claggart. In the pit, Ivor Bolton masterfully deploys, along with the Orchestra of the Teatro Real, all the energy and power of Britten's fifth opera.

This Chandos production must now be first choice for this work.

Welcome to John Gay’s and Benjamin Britten’s romp through some seamy but also colourful and vibrant elements of 18 ^th century London. This work established the ballad opera in which spoken dialogue alternated with musical items. Gay’s satirical words were set to well-known traditional and popular tunes. Two hundred and twenty years later Britten added 20 ^th century accompaniments.

What’s entirely Britten here is the fresh caterwauling Overture (tr. 2) in which the various characters are given brief sound-portraits. There’s an oboe of sinuous sweetness for Polly (0:40), a cavorting clarinet for Macheath (1:29), suave strings and a jocular bassoon for the highwaymen (2:35) and a bantering circus-like master of ceremonies style for Mr Peachum (3:25). It’s all terrifically realized by the City of London Sinfonia who play marvellously throughout.

But what of the songs? Filch’s ‘’Tis woman that seduces all Mankind’ (tr. 5) is a good example of Britten allowing an original tune free rein while giving it modern dress with balmy woodwind and harp. The heroine Polly comes in (tr.12) to strains of her first song over which there are snatches of dialogue. This, like the melodrama which shortly follows (tr. 20), is Britten’s neat way of subverting the claim in the opening dialogue that this opera will have no “unnatural” recitative. Polly’s first song, ‘Virgins are like the fair flower in its lustre’ has as its tune Purcell’s ‘What shall I do to show how much I love him?’ from Dioclesian. Like its original, it is shown by Leah-Marian Jones to be at once wistful and coy. Her duet with Susan Bickley’s Mrs Peachum, ’O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed’ (tr. 15) catches well a cosy lullaby make-believe, aided by the gently rocking strings’ accompaniment. It’s lovely but only fleeting. Another notable accompaniment is the flutter-tonguing flute illustrating Polly’s ‘The Turtle thus with plaintive crying’ (tr. 19).

The highwayman hero Macheath enters and Tom Randle proves courteous enough to Jones’ simpering. The duet between Macheath and Polly, ’Were I laid on Greenland’s coast’ (tr. 22) is sweetly done but I felt the singers were over-conscious of the need to match the flowing orchestration and then the addition of chorus and drum. Some of the natural freshness is lost that’s present in the 1963 Aldeburgh Festival staging on DVD (Decca 074 3329). In this Chandos CD ‘The Miser thus a shilling sees’ (tr. 24) responds better to the typical careful attention of conductor Christian Curnyn’s approach. The disciplined emphasis of rhythm in its thorny progression matches the text’s poetic expression of loss. A pity, however, the second appearance of “Till home and friends are lost at last” (1:54) isn’t, as marked in the score ‘(in the distance)’ as the lovers go their separate ways. It’s an effect achieved in the BBC broadcast recording of the original 1948 production conducted by Britten (Pearl GEM 0225).

The highwaymen’s ’Fill ev’ry glass’ (tr. 26) is a drinking song of the sturdy, resolute variety in 2009 where a lustier abandon was shown in 1948. ‘Let us take the road’ (tr. 28) is infused with eagerness because of the excitement Britten and Curnyn convey in sketching the approach of the coach. Tom Randle’s Macheath has a too cultivated spoken voice but his singing is virile enough. You can hear this in ‘If the heart of a man is depressed with cares’ (tr. 29), marked as a caressing Andante backed by sweetly musing violin solo and rocking clarinet. Again I felt the line was held back a little in deference to the detail of the accompaniment. At this point Macheath is visited by a parade of prostitutes and what’s entertaining in the Decca DVD is rather curious here. With no sounds incorporated of women moving around, squealing and the like , you might think Macheath is imagining it all. I guess this is so as not to detract from Britten’s own variety parade of instruments, a kind of ‘Young Person’s Guide to Women’. There’s a superb tambourine to enliven the headiness of ‘Youth’s the season made for joys’. Randle sings with sunny freedom the ad libitum ‘Ah’s above the chorus repeat, though the top C final phrase is left to a soprano. Now betrayed by the women, his ‘At the Tree I shall suffer with pleasure’ has a disciplined testiness but less venom than Decca’s Kenneth McKellar.

Again more telling in this Chandos production is the more meditative material. The opening song of Act 2, ‘Man may escape from rope and gun’ (CD2, tr. 2), where Randle shows how transfixed Macheath is in his repetition of ‘woman’, savours past joys even while aware they’re the cause of present pain. Sarah Fox, as Lucy Lockit, is scarily efficient in her spite in ‘Thus when a good Housewife sees a rat’ (tr. 3). Polly’s response is the more sensitively elegiac ‘Thus when the Swallow seeking prey’ (tr. 10) and here Leah-Marian Jones is rich, smooth and eloquent. For me, however, Macheath’s ‘How happy could I be with either’ (tr. 11) is taken so fast it becomes too much a tongue-twister virtuoso piece losing some of its whimsy. In 1948 Peter Pears’ lighter touch was more effective. Polly has the easier task of rising above all this with ‘Cease your funning’ (tr.12), whose merging into the chorus and distancing of perspective are successfully achieved before we’re brought back to earth with a vengeance by Lucy’s crisp, snappy ‘Why how now, Madam Flirt!’ (tr. 13). The finale begins with Lucy and Polly showing great resolve. ‘No power on earth can e’er divide’ (tr. 14) is well progressed by Curnyn to an exciting ‘Horay’ trio response from Macheath, Lockit and Peachum. The there’s then increasing speed with a backing chorus in Sullivanesque abandon.

The opening song of Act 3, Lucy’s ‘When young at the bar’ (tr. 16) should be familiar as the tune is Purcell’s ‘If love’s a sweet passion’ from The Fairy Queen. Fox invests it with its original sad yearning while Curnyn points the claustrophobic cloying nature of Britten’s rich scoring of the wry accompaniment. Of a different order and part of the score’s kaleidoscopic variety is the relished archness of Frances McCafferty as Mrs Trapes delivering ‘In the days of my youth I could bill like a dove’ (tr. 21) with relished archness. To this is added the raucous carousing of Lockit and Peachum. Shortly there’s also the poignancy of Lucy and Polly’s ‘A curse attends a woman’s love’ (tr. 25). The paradox that these two candidates for Macheath’s affection can at one moment be united in their shared sense of rejection and understanding of the impossibility of their situation and at the next daggers drawn as rivals and eager still to court Macheath with warm affection at ‘Hither, dear husband, turn your eyes’ (tr. 28) is exploited dramatically. Fox’s pleading for Macheath’s life with ‘When he holds up his hand’ (tr. 31) ought to be the more persuasive, aided by Britten’s obbligato oboe accompaniment. ‘The Charge is prepared’ is a stock, formal chorus considerably pepped up by Mrs Peachum’s triumphant ‘Ah’s and glissando shrieks over its orchestral postlude.

Britten creates a closing scena (tr. 34) with Macheath in the condemned cell at first extolling the virtues of drink when about to die, then recalling pretty women. This gives way to the questioning protest ‘must I die?’. This is well sung by Randle but doesn’t quite have Pears’ grasp of the torment of ever-fluctuating contrasts of mood. Polly and Lucy offer a moving show of support, ‘Would I might be hanged’ to the heavily insistent backdrop of the funeral knell. In 1948 Britten’s knell is less weighty but more searing. Macheath realistically confesses ‘my courage is out’. The spoken dialogue wipes this all away. The highwaymen begin an address directly to the audience to demand the playwright provides a reprieve and all the players join in so the work can end with a dance. This bit of trickery and the rejection of the moral that vice must be punished works better in sound alone than the quicker and tamer removal of justice in the DVD. So you finish the Chandos sound recording remembering the company’s lusty tra-las and Fox’s top C.

This Chandos is the fullest version of the three currently available in the UK, playing at 117:52 in comparison with Decca’s 93:50 and Pearl’s 79:03. The differences are largely down to the Chandos including more of Gay’s spoken dialogue with alterations and additions by Tyrone Guthrie though even here I’d guess about a quarter of the dialogue published in the full and vocal scores has been cut. I don’t think this is a disadvantage because there’s a good deal of repetition in the text anyway. However, some musical numbers are also cut in the other recordings: Mrs Peachum’s ‘If Love the Virgin’s Heart invade’ (CD1 tr. 9) can only be heard here. To see the piece staged is a benefit. On the DVD the dialogue generally has a touch more pace and life, being less self-conscious in delivery. In the same vein the switch from dialogue to music flows more seamlessly and the folksong origins of many of the tunes are delivered with a more disarmingly innocent directness. The feeling between the characters is clearer in the ensemble numbers. The 1948 recording is striking for the verve of Britten’s direction, the charm of Pears’ light heroic manner and the lovely unforced upper register of Nancy Evans as Polly. Listen to her in ‘The Miser thus a shilling sees’. On the other hand it also at times adopts an over-romantic style, as in ‘O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed’ or is too patrician as in ‘Virgins are like the fair flower’.

To conclude, then, although sometimes more studied and deliberate than it might be, including careful points of emphasis within the dialogue, this Chandos production must now be first choice for this work. It also offers you in most luxuriant detail the colour and density of Britten’s orchestration.

-- Michael Greenhalgh, MusicWeb International

Britten's 'A Ceremony of Carols' is a masterpiece composed on board ship as Britten returned to England from the U.S.A. in 1948, a touching evocation of boyhood lost but never forgotten. 'A Boy was Born' is a work that first made Britten famous, based on a theme and variations of astonishing ingenuity. The 'Missa Brevis', written for the boys of Westminster Cathedral, is a gem that is some ways looks forward to the 'War Requiem' which came two years later.

Fans of Benjamin Britten and of The Sixteen will rejoice at this reissue of material from the choir's acclaimed three-volume Britten series originally recorded for the now-defunct Collins label. (Presumably all of the music from the complete set eventually will appear under the Sixteen's new Coro emblem.) If you know the earlier recordings, you'll quickly notice that the program here is different from the original configurations: there are five selections from Collins' Vol. 3--Hymn to the Virgin, A Hymn of Saint Columba, Hymn to Saint Peter, Jubilate Deo, Festival Te Deum; three from Vol. 2--Rejoice in the Lamb; Antiphon; Te Deum in C; and the Hymn to Saint Cecilia from Vol. 1.

Recorded performances of Britten's choral music don't get any better than this. No one will argue that this choir was/is capable of singing anything, and singing it as well as or better than anyone--and these Britten pieces are made for exuberant, exultant, exacting singing that the Sixteen can do without a blip, a glitch, or the slightest faltering step. From the fawning, devotional A Hymn to the Virgin to the wild and glorious Rejoice in the Lamb, this is music most perfectly created and most grandly and emphatically presented. A first-class effort; a classic.

--David Vernier

Works:
Hymn to the Virgin
A Hymn of Saint Columba
Hymn to Saint Peter
Antiphon
Te Deum in C
Jubilate Deo
Hymn to Saint Cecilia
Festival Te Deum
Rejoice in the Lamb

George Benjamin This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

WRITTEN ON SKIN
(Blu-ray Disc Version)

Protector – Christopher Purves
Agnès – Barbara Hannigan
First Angel / Boy – Bejun Mehta
Second Angel / Marie – Victoria Simmonds
Third Angel / John – Allan Clayton

Royal Opera House Chorus and Orchestra
George Benjamin, conductor

Katie Mitchell, stage director

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, March 2013

Bonus:
- Interview with George Benjamin
- Introduction to Written on Skin
- Cast gallery

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German, Japanese
Running time: 89 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (Blu-ray)

Also available on Blu-ray

George Benjamin
WRITTEN ON SKIN

Protector – Christopher Purves
Agnès – Barbara Hannigan
First Angel / Boy – Bejun Mehta
Second Angel / Marie – Victoria Simmonds
Third Angel / John – Allan Clayton

Royal Opera House Chorus and Orchestra
George Benjamin, conductor

Katie Mitchell, stage director

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, March 2013

Bonus:
- Interview with George Benjamin
- Introduction to Written on Skin
- Cast gallery

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German, Japanese
Running time: 89 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

Unmissable.

George Benjamin is one of the UK’s leading voices in the contemporary music scene, with widespread recognition and a pedigree of hallowed teachers, not least Messiaen and Alexander Goehr. Into the Little Hill is Benjamin’s first operatic work and comes in the form of a 36 minute work in two parts for soprano, alto and ensemble of fifteen players. This includes unusual sounds such as bass flute, two basset-horns, contrabass clarinet, mandolin and banjo. The work is a setting of a text by Martin Crimp which deals with the story of the Pied Piper. The setting is modern, with references to aspects of contemporary life, such as suitcases, limousines, money and photographs. This is a timeless story which is expertly handled to be relevant to contemporary life. Benjamin’s handling of the text is no less expert. His vocal writing has an individual style which Anu Komsi and Hilary Summers perform with a sense of complete naturalness and an almost organic flow. The emotional impact of the music is wide-ranging, from the dramatic opening bars which cannot fail to grab the attention (Kill them they bite, Kill them they steal) to the mournful and more intimate moments (such as in track 5, where the child asks why must the rats die mummy? over the sound of a solo bass flute), and the moments of panic (where is my child?). The musical material is fast paced in its changes but retains a strong sense of unity and direction throughout. Benjamin’s musical language is fresh and instantly engaging, and the ensemble writing is handled with skill and flair. This is a first rate performance of an excellent piece of music.

Dance Figures is a set of nine short pieces for orchestra, composed in 2004. Its full title is Nine Choreographic scenes for orchestra. Benjamin creates a range of characterisations between the pieces, which form a coherent whole. There is a sense of refinement in these pieces; the textures have clarity and Benjamin does not seem afraid to interrupt the overall direction to change the mood of a section. Undoubtedly, this serves to heighten the direction rather than to hamper it; variety in that sense works here to maintain interest and to develop the music’s expression. This is a fine piece of orchestral writing, which gathers momentum until its dramatic end. This version is an impeccable live recording by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the experienced baton of Oliver Kussen.

The final work on this disc is another live recording, of Sometime Voices, written a decade earlier than Into the Little Hill, for baritone, choir and orchestra. This is a ten minute piece which makes use of verses from Shakespeare (The Tempest). Benjamin’s craftsmanship is no less apparent here; the music appears to take on layers – in the foreground the baritone soloist takes on long, emotive lines, richly expressive and sumptuous in their tone. The middle ground is taken by the orchestral accompaniment, which unfolds with fragmentary colours and poised rhythmic definition. Perhaps most magically of all, the choir holds its position in the background, pianissimo for much of the work, creating a haunting and dream-like atmosphere. That music can work so convincingly in these different strata is testament to Benjamin’s compositional genius. Although this is a short work it is a major composition in terms of its far-reaching emotional impact. The climactic moment is truly breathtaking, surpassed only by the impact of the sudden return of the solo baritone for the final line of the text. A stunning performance, which, in combination with the other works heard here, makes this CD.

-- Carla Rees, MusicWeb International

GODARD Piano Trios: in g, op. 32; in F, op. 72. Jocelyn: Berceuse • Parnassus Tr • MDG GOLD 3031615 (59:47)


Listening to these two piano trios by Benjamin Godard (1849–95), one would never guess that he trained as a violinist under Henri Vieuxtemps at the Paris Conservatory. I say this because both works are launched by a storm of piano passagework so turbulent as to leave Mendelssohn hanging on for dear life at the dock. From this one might understandably surmise that Godard was one of the great keyboard virtuosos of the 19th century, though such was not the case. This is music that is strangely beautiful and beautifully strange, which makes it difficult to describe, so perhaps some background will help.


The Jewish Godard was born in Paris at a time when opera was all the rage and when piano and violin giants—Alkan, Chopin, Liszt, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, etc.—filled Parisian salons and concert halls to overflowing. Godard, like his slightly earlier French Jewish compatriots Meyerbeer and Halévy, sought fame and fortune in the opera house, writing at least eight operas, only one of which, Jocelyn , seems to have had any staying power. Unlike Meyerbeer and Halévy, however, Godard did not place all or most of his eggs in one basket. He was highly prolific in a number of genres, composing a surprisingly large number of works considering his relatively short life of 46 years. Among his output are concertos for violin and piano—a Naxos recording of the violin concertos with Chloë Hanslip was reviewed by Ian Lace in Fanfare 31:6—ballets, overtures, three symphonies, three string quartets, sonatas for violin and cello, the two piano trios on this disc, plus numerous songs and solo piano pieces. Yet out of more than 150 works, Godard is today remembered mainly for the Berceuse from his opera Jocelyn , added as an encore at the end of the current CD. It might also be mentioned that Godard was openly hostile to Wagner and outspokenly critical of the German composer’s anti-Semitism.


It’s too easy, perhaps intellectually lazy even, to cite Mendelssohn and Schumann as the only influences in Godard’s music and to just leave it at that, for there’s much more going on here. Take, for example, the rolling, roiling turbulence that opens the 1884 Piano Trio No. 2 in F Major. Franck’s A-Major Violin Sonata was still two years in the offing, but it’s uncanny how closely Godard’s writing presages the beginning of the second movement in Franck’s sonata. There is also a degree and a type of chromaticism in this score that would not have occurred to Mendelssohn or Schumann and that is more common to the French school; I’m thinking particularly of Fauré, who, after all, was born five years before Godard.


Like most works of its genre and period, a second theme, quieter and more lyrical in nature, is introduced. But here is where I believe Godard is at his weakest. The desire and the impulse are there, the gesture sincere, but the ability to craft a memorable melody eludes him, and what emerges in its place is a kind of soft-shoe, salon-style music that bides its time until the next storm surge washes away the cucumber and cress sandwiches. Listen, for example, beginning at 4:20 in the first movement, and then to the violin’s entrance 10 seconds later.


The Piano Trio No.1 in G Minor dates from 1880 and was, at one time, quite popular. Again, the piece opens in a state of tumult, with restless, agitated passagework in the piano. Here, the Mendelssohn influence is a bit more pronounced. Listen, for example, beginning at 1:54 in the first movement, to the second theme that unfolds like a Mendelssohnian song without words. The Leipzig composer is also conjured up in Godard’s Tempo di Menuetto, which is actually a moderately paced scherzo. But these good-natured elves sound more like oafs, hiccupping and clumsily tripping over each other as if they’ve had a bit too much to drink.


I might question the Parnassus Trio’s violinist, Yamel Yu, and cellist, Michael Gross, for overdoing it a bit on the portamentos in the Andante quasi Adagio and elsewhere. The potted plant is leafy enough; fertilizer is not needed. As note author Martin Bernklau observes, “The way Godard’s lyrical talent sometimes borders on sentimentality in the slow movements probably engendered a favorable response in the salons.”


The concluding Allegro vivace provides further evidence of French influences in Godard’s music that tend to dilute the prima facie Mendelssohn/Schumann argument, for here we have a clear example of the cyclic techniques favored by Berlioz, Franck, Saint-Saëns, and Liszt. The trio’s last movement begins with the same material that began the first movement. Godard then transforms it harmonically and rhythmically in true cyclic fashion.


As salon pieces go, the Berceuse from Jocelyn , in Bernklau’s words, “is certainly not kitsch despite its popularity. It is a little gem whose tender melodic beauty has survived more than a century.”


Most record labels are proud to trumpet first-ever recordings. That MDG doesn’t do so in this case suggests to me that previous recordings of Godard’s piano trios may have once existed. Currently, however, I find no other listings. As hinted at above, I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the Parnassus Trio’s somewhat raffish readings; I could imagine this music being played more tastefully and with greater refinement by a French ensemble that better understood the musical aesthetic of Godard’s time and place. But we’re not likely to get another recording of these works anytime soon, and technically, the Parnassus Trio is an exceptionally fine ensemble whose many excellent performances on MDG—trios by Lalo, Philipp Scharwenka, and Rheinberger—I’ve been enjoying for a number of years. Recording, as always with this label, is outstanding. In the absence of perhaps more idiomatic readings, this is definitely recommended, especially to those who enjoy exploring the nooks and crannies of 19th-century chamber music.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins


Although Benjamin Godard's prolific output is represented today primarily by the Berceuse from his opera Jocelyn, his two piano trios are anything but salon fluff. Each four-movement work fully taps the medium's textural potential, with plenty of melodic interest, well-sustained development, and witty touches, such as the deft alterations from triple to duple time in the G minor Trio Minuetto and the hushed exchanges between the piano's broken chords and the pizzicato strings in the F major Trio's Allegro vivace finale (letter L in my copy of the Durand score).

The Trio Parnassus pretty much matches the high standards it set in its excellent Schumann recordings for MDG. The musicians are especially responsive to the Adagio movements' long, unfolding narratives, and generally take Godard's explicit dynamic directives on faith. Ideally I'd prefer faster, more effervescent and sharply characterized finales than what the Trio Parnassus delivers, but the ensemble still makes a strong case for reviving these works. In the absence of an earlier, out-of-print edition on Koch Schwann featuring the Trio Ma Non Troppo, the Trio Parnassus has no current catalog competition here. Recommended.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

George Benjamin is a contemporary composer known best among small circles, but with a loyal international following. This recording contains five of his pieces, and they share a common style. Benjamin treats a composition as a landscape: a kind of blank, rolling panorama onto which he affixes musical ideas. His sound is very textured and evocative. 'Ringed by the Flat Horizon,' for example, portrays a storm that overtakes a vast open space. The music begins ominously and contains a variety of created sound effects along with rapid fire crescendos into huge orchestral crashes. 'A Mind In Winter' is contrarily a setting of "The Snowman" (a poem by Wallace Stevens), and yet is built upon the same sort of abstract picture-building and sweeping evocative gestures for the voice. Benjamin's vocabulary is developed from the modern schools of atonality, and his teacher Messiaen is a clear and strong influence on his work. For those attracted to the modern schools of classical composition, they will find a great many layers to be unveiled in this recording.

Classical Music

I sat down to type up this review late on the evening of Tuesday 1 June 2010. Halfway through doing so, wanting to check a date, I went to the website devoted to Benjamin Lees, where I was faced with the following announcement: “IT IS WITH PROFOUND SADNESS THAT THE FAMILY ANNOUNCES THE PASSING OF COMPOSER BENJAMIN LEES ON MAY 31, 2010”. This review - written on the day after the composer’s death - necessarily becomes more of a memorial than I intended it to be when I sat down to put it together.
 
Lees was born in China, brought up and educated in California. From 1949 to 1954 he studied with George Antheil who acted as a largely unpaid tutor out of respect for Lees’ abilities. From the mid-1950s onwards his works began to be performed quite widely and by distinguished performers, without his ever perhaps becoming a ‘major’ figure in American music. A Guggenheim fellowship enabled him to spend much of his time in Europe in the second half of the 1950s. Never a composer who aspired to be thought of as especially ‘American’, these European years were important for Lees, years when he could evolve his own voice without direct involvement in the style wars of American music. Prokofiev, Bartók and Shostakovich became important exemplars for Lees.
 
In a 1987 interview with Bruce Duffie, when the interviewer enquired “in a great number of your own works, you have used the traditional approach - Slonimsky calls it accessibility - which makes your music attractive to conductors and soloists.  Is this something you have consciously built in to your pieces, or is this an outgrowth of what you wanted to write innately?”, Lees answered as follows: “The accessibility, I suppose, comes from something that George Antheil told me when I was studying with him.  He put it very succinctly, and it was one of those catch words which stuck in the memory.  He said, “Music must have a face.  A theme must have a face, something which is really recognizable, both to you and to the listener.”  And again, it matters not what style a person writes in, but it cannot simply be amorphous.  It cannot be really formless and it cannot be merely notes spinning”. Certainly Lees’ music never seeks to exclude listeners, or to make their life needlessly difficult by the flaunting of the composer’s ‘cleverness’. Nor, on the other hand, does he write down, or write to please some lowest common denominator of taste and demand. Like any substantial composer, Lees seems always to have been true to himself, to have been serenely unworried, so far as one can judge, by matters of mere fashion or popularity. Honesty, indeed, has always struck me as one of the hallmarks of his work, a directness of communication. It seems appropriate that he should once have said that “there are two kinds of composers. One is the intellectual and the other is visceral. I fall into the latter category. If my stomach doesn’t tighten at an idea, then it’s not the right idea.”
 
Most attention - and perhaps rightly so - has been paid to Lees’ orchestral works, not least his five symphonies. But, as this disc demonstrates well and clearly, he also had plenty to say in that other ‘classical’ form - the string quartet, of which he wrote six. This rewarding Naxos disc contains three of them in fine performances by the Cypress Quartet, for whom the fifth and the sixth were written.
 
The Cypress Quartet begin their programme with Lees’ first quartet, written in 1952, and premiered the following year in Los Angles - and in 1954 played in New York by the Budapest Quartet. In three movements (moderato-adagietto-allegro vivo) it has an appealing grace, at its most obvious in the adagietto, a lovely moment that exudes a simplicity - created by considerable art - and only slightly troubled lyricism that has a more or less pastoral quality. In the movement that precedes it some crisp and dynamic writing alternates with more reflective passages. In the last movement - essentially a rondo - the writing is engagingly animated, seeming to speak out of a mind full of ideas and eagerness. A quartet well worth hearing - especially when so well performed - but not yet fully embodying the composer’s mature voice.
 
The two ‘late’ quartets give us that voice in abundance. The four movements of the fifth quartet (measured - arioso - quick, quiet - explosive) form a musical argument of considerable density, marked both by striking moments and a sense of larger design. The writing for cello at the opening of the first movement, and the ensuing dialogue with the other instruments is one of those striking moments. Another comes in the second movement when an aggressive intervention by the cello disrupts the meditative conversation of the two violins. The more one listens, the more such moments one discovers. The third movement is a miniature delight (it lasts less than two minutes), music of evanescent beauty. The contrast with the fourth movement could hardly be more marked - full as it is of musical contention and turbulence, of assertion and annoyed counter-assertion, a conflict not so much resolved as serving to fuel a still angry ending.
 
Where the sixth quartet is concerned the composer’s markings for its four movements say most of what the mere reviewer might want to say about the work: “measured, dolorous - calm, steady - quiet, eerie - unhurried”. And they are! The use pizzicato passages is a particular feature of this quartet - notably at moments in the first and third movements. Without any wilful oddity or eccentricity, Lees creates some fresh and interesting effects at more than one point in this quartet. To say that one can ‘hear’ his respect for Bartók and Shostakovich is not, repeat not, to belittle his work as derivative. It is merely to recognise that, like 99% (or more!) of all artists, Lees was not a toweringly inventive figure. He was a highly accomplished craftsman who had listened to, and learned from, the music of the past and the present; a composer who refused to be merely modish or to chase the fashionable at the cost of fidelity to what he felt to be right for him.
 
It is, I hope, timely to celebrate Lees’ achievement, immediately after his death. Not a composer of spectacular fame, he worked with a seriousness and truth that some more famous fall short of.
 
-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

One of the most beautiful of records; if the repertoire appeals it will be pretty useless to await a better performance or production of it than this.

REVIEW:

One of the most beautiful of records; if the repertoire appeals it will be pretty useless to await a better performance or production of it than this.

There are tenors who not only could but would scream any guitarist into inaudibility. Ian Partridge is not one of them, indeed I would never hope to hear a gentler, more affecting style applied to the repertoire concerned. I was not familiar with the Finnish guitarist Jukka Savijoki, but I know now that he is among the most sensitive of accompanists, as well as a soloist of great skill, style and artistry.

Much of the record's program is indeed written for solo guitar, exploited with great skill by Britten and a little less expectedly, but no less convincingly, by Lennox Berkeley. The combined skills of both performers and writers (whether composing or arranging) offer continuous delight to any listener who is not positively antipathetic to the repertoire concerned. Or perhaps even if he is, but is prepared to be won over by the shared magic of the combined performers and composers.

The magic is conveyed by a faultless recording and helped along by a most informative booklet. The spelling of the ''dear'' who was shot is, I believe, quite correct: not the animal, but the loved human, in a sense that survives, still, in the now rather dated usage ''my dear''.

-- Gramophone [1/1993]

Get ready for revelation! Mirror Butterfly: The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite is an epic jazz opera spanning four continents and five centuries. The opera is a tribute to the resistance of migrants to the destruction of ecologies, economies, and cultures unleashed by slavery, conquest, and colonization- in short, a history of capitalism from the point of view of women warriors from Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. A trinity of revolutionary women converge to tell stories of migration, singing a Sermon on the Mount to bring down Babylon. The plot of Mirror Butterfly is inspired by The Story of the Sword, a Mayan parable shared with us by the Zapatista autonomous schools. The story symbolizes the centuries-long Mayan resistance to the conquest and Indigenous genocide through avatars of a tree, a stone, and water. In their story, a sword (representing the conquest) cuts down a tree (Mayan society). The tree transforms into a rock, which is underground and still; but the sword hacks at it and shatters it, though not without damage. Finally, the stone transforms into water, which the sword is unable to resist. The sword rusts and withers away in this eternal elemental. The water symbolizes the flourishing grassroots-organizing of indigenous communities and their allies in contemporary Mexico. The lesson of the tale is that we shall live to see an indigenous-centric Mexico and, indeed, an entire world.