Word: britten
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Perfect Gem. In 1949, tired and grey, Koussy turned his baton over to Charles Munch. In 25 years, he had brought to U.S. ears more contemporary music than anyone else in history. His Koussevitzky Music Foundation had commissioned works from such giants as Bartok and Britten. His dream was realized...
Instead, staunch Critic Smith laid about the field with renewed energy. He had kind words for some-Composer Benjamin Britten, Conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent. But he found the acoustics of the new hall built for the Festival of Britain "harsh" and "unlovely. One felt like rushing out to seek the relative quiet of Waterloo Station." Last week, while Britons raged, he wound up his four-week critical series with a sermon...
Thomson would have been on stronger ground in citing the absence of contemporary music. Community's 1,000 audiences did not see Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Schoenberg or Britten on any pianist's program. They heard the music of only three contemporary U.S. composers, Morton Gould, Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson himself. Fourteen touring symphony orchestras served soothing programs made up mostly of Tchaikovsky and Wagner. Stravinsky cracked a few programs with his Firebird suite...
...that Glyndebourne could not reopen on its old affluent basis: taxes had reduced Christie's purse, and austerity made the whole idea out of the question. Bing hit on a solution: if Glyndebourne could no longer afford large productions, it could afford small ones. Young British Composer Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia (TIME, June 9, 1947), which requires next to no scenery, only a handful of singers and an orchestra of twelve, reopened Glyndebourne...
...have gambled the same money on a more contemporary work, such as Alban Berg's formidable atonal opera, Wozzeck. Bing's answer to that is that he would like to do Wozzeck, but he cannot afford right now to overlook the fate of another contemporary opera, Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, which was withdrawn after two seasons, so offended one opera lover that he spat in the box-office window. (Says John Gutman: "Whenever I mention Wozzeck, Bing threatens to put me in the box office." The Met still faces the problem of having...