Word: britten
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Benjamin Britten began the celebration of his 50th birthday by conducting the London Symphony last September in a concert dedicated to himself. He took the podium again last week to honor his birthday with a performance of his War Requiem at London's Royal Festival Hall. Having given English critics the entire autumn to contemplate the significance of a birthday that in fact occurred in late November, Britten found himself still best described by two praiseful paradoxes. Though he has gained immensely in intellectual force over the years, he has lost none of his youthful high spirits and originality...
Clear & Clean. It was only last year that Britten produced the War Requiem, which is the capstone of his remarkable career. And since its first performance for the rededication of the Coventry Cathedral, the Requiem has grown in esteem at every hearing, until it is now acclaimed both in Britain and abroad as a modern masterwork. It describes the wide range of Britten's vision and his mastery of the clean, clear voice in which he speaks better than any of his other compositions. With it Britten has emerged as England's greatest composer since Henry Purcell...
...fear and trembling, plus a savvy pal's coaching, he has invited to his scrubby flat what he thinks is a feminine moonlight sonata. Enter the girl (Geraldine McEwan), a sniffly, scratchy, giggly chick with the inner beauty of a beer can. She is not smitten with Benjamin Britten. The pal gets Tchaik's girl without half trying. Brian Bedford gives love's labor lost a touchingly bewildered pathos, but despite its technical adroitness, The Private Ear seldom breaks free of the anticlimactic art of the expected...
Inflaming Ease. In ten years in San Francisco, Adler's furious pursuit of perfection has brought remarkable results. The company has given the first U.S. performances of such works as Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream and Cherubini's Medea, revivals of Nabucco and Ariadne auf Naxos, American opera debuts to such singers as Birgit Nilsson, Leontyne Price, Boris Christoff, Sandor Konya and Sutherland. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who has yet to sing at New York's Metropolitan, has been appearing in San Francisco since 1955. On good nights, the opera's chorus and ballet...
...breakfast, filled the mornings with rehearsals and conducting classes, the afternoons with conferences and more rehearsals, the evenings with performances. He played through a Mozart series, a Prokofiev cycle, and led his orchestra through a total of 32 works ne-W to Tanglewood, including the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem...