Nzsofre - Brittensinfonia Da Requiem [CD]

Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976) Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20 Lacrymosa Dies irae Requiem aeternam Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes, Op. 33 Dawn Sunday Morning Moonlight Stonn Passacaglia, Op. 33b An American Overture Benjamin Britten occupies an unrivalled position in English music of the twentieth century and a place of the greatest importance in the wider musical world. While Elgar was in some ways part of late nineteenth century German romantic tradition, Britten avoided the trap offered by musical nationalism and the insular debt to folk-music of his older contemporaries, while profiting from that tradition in a much wider European context. He may be seen as following in part a path mapped out by Mahler. He possessed a special gift for word-setting and vocal writing, a facility that Purcell had shown and that was the foundation of a remarkable series of operas that brought English opera for the first time into international repertoire. Tonal in his musical language, he knew well how to use inventively, imaginatively and, above all, musically, techniques that in other hands often seemed arid. His work owed much to the friendship and constant companionship of the singer Peter Pears, for whom Brit ten wrote many of his principal operatic rôles and whose qualities of voice and intelligence clearly had a marked effect on his vocal writing. Benjamin Britten was born in the East Anglian seaside town of Lowestoft in 1913. His talents as a composer were apparent in childhood, when he was able to study with Frank Bridge. His later study at the Royal College of Music proved less fruitful, although he was able to develop his abilities as a pianist and accompanist, later put to full use in concert tours and recitals with Peter Pears. His association with the poet W.H. Auden, with whom he undertook various collaborations, was in part behind his departure with Pears in 1939 for the United States of America, where, it seemed, opportunities offered, away from the petty jealousies and inhibitions of his own country. The outbreak of war in Europe in September brought obvious difficulties. Britten and Pears were firmly pacifist in their beliefs, but could not but be horrified by the excesses of Fascism and National Socialism and by the difficulties faced in war-time Britain. In particular Britten felt keenly the isolation from his own roots in East Anglia, to which he and Pears were eventually able to return in March 1942, rejecting the option of nominal military service as musicians in uniform in favour of overt pacifism. The end of the war and the re-opening of Sadler's Wells Opera brought the new opera Peter Grimes, planned in America and a revelation at its first performance in June 1945. Factionalism in the Sadler's Wells Company led to the foundation of the English Opera Group and a series of chamber operas, followed, as prejudices and jealousies died, by the eventual very general acceptance of Britten as a composer of the highest