Benjamin: Into the Little Hill, Flight & Dream of the Song

$15.99
Label
Nimbus
Release Date
May 5, 2017
Format
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    Featuring ⌄
    • COMPOSER
      BENJAMIN, GEORGE
    • ORCHESTRA / ENSEMBLE
      London Sinfonietta, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
    • PERFORMER
      Plitmann, Bickley, Benjamin, Cox, Mehta, Nederlan
    Product Details ⌄
    Works ⌄

    1. Part I: Kill them they bite (The Crowd)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: London Sinfonietta

      Performer: Hila Plitmann, Susan Bickley

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    2. Part I: The Minister greets the crowd (The Minister and the Crowd)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: London Sinfonietta

      Performer: Susan Bickley

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    3. Part I: Kill them they bite (The Crowd)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: London Sinfonietta

      Performer: Hila Plitmann, Susan Bickley

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    4. Part I: Night comes but not sleep (The Minister and the Stranger)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: London Sinfonietta

      Performer: Susan Bickley, Hila Plitmann

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    5. Part I: Interlude: Why must the rats die, Mummy? (Mother and Child)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: London Sinfonietta

      Performer: Susan Bickley, Hila Plitmann

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    6. Part II: Under a clear sky (Inside the Minister's Head)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: London Sinfonietta

      Performer: Hila Plitmann, Susan Bickley

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    7. Part II: His head lies on his desk (The Minister and the Stranger)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: London Sinfonietta

      Performer: Susan Bickley, Hila Plitmann

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    8. Part II: Interlude: Each cradle rocks empty (Mothers and Children)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: London Sinfonietta

      Performer: Susan Bickley, Hila Plitmann

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    9. Flight

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Performer: Michael Cox

    10. I. The Pen

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Performer: Bejun Mehta

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    11. II. The Multiple Troubles of Man

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Performer: Bejun Mehta

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    12. III. Gazing Through the Night - Casida del Llanto (Casida of the Weeping)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: female section Netherlands Chamber Choir, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Performer: Bejun Mehta

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    13. IV. Gacela del Amor Maravilloso (Gacela of Marvellous Love)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: female section Netherlands Chamber Choir, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    14. V. The Gazelle

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Performer: Bejun Mehta

      Conductor: George Benjamin

    15. VI. My Heart Thinks as the Sun Comes Up - Casida del Herido por El Agua (Casida of the Wound by Water)

      Composer: George Benjamin

      Ensemble: female section Netherlands Chamber Choir, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

      Performer: Bejun Mehta

      Conductor: George Benjamin


Written in his late teens: Flight, for solo flute, whose swooping crests and curlicues are fervently relished in Michael Cox's performance. Benjamin describes the piece as 'inspired by the sight of birds soaring and dipping over the peaks of the Swiss Alps'. Listening to the piece you'll hear a panoply of songs surfing the musical thermals in the alpine either: low, long-breathed cries and calls, filigree flocks of ornamentation in the atmospheric heights of the flute's register, a chorus of vapors conjured by a single instrument. Into The Little Hill is based on the Pied Piper story, allowing audiences an immediate entry point into the opera's dramaturgy. But Crimp's re-telling simultaneously updates the story, with its politicians, photographs, and limousines, and opens up further mythic dimensions to the narrative. The drama of Into the Little Hill is concisce, clear and simultaneously ambiguous, even chilling. Benjamin says, 'Martin's text is hard-edged, formal, and hyper-condensed'. The reason for its musical and dramatic success is Benjamin's unerring feeling for expressive characterisation. Each layer of Into the Little Hill's score is immediately identifiable, from the Crowd's baying cries of 'Kill them' rightat the start of the piece, to the rodentine scurrying of the rat's music, and the Mother's lamenting grief in the last scene. Dream of the Song is a mysteriously sensual and sensually strange song-cycle for countertenor, a halo of female voices that are similar in register, but so different in timbre and sound and expression, and orchestra. The counter-tenor sings poems, in English, by Jewish poets of 11th century Andalucia, themselves inspired by Arabic poetry of earlier centuries. There are images of ravishment and wonder here - moonlight, the celestial tent of the sky, a dream of a gazelle, a harp, a flute - but they are always undercut by other ideas. Above all, it's the gossamer rapier of Benjamin's music that cuts to the heart of these settings.