Word: britten
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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...
Since his opera Peter Grimes brought him to world prominence (TIME cover, Feb. 16, 1948), Britten has turned out a varied and impressive body of work, including nine other operas, a ballet, and everything from songs to symphonies, Masses to metamorphoses. Beyond composition, his talents sparkle with equal virtuosity. He is a gifted conductor, and when he accompanied Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich on the piano in the premiere of a Britten cello sonata, one critic called him "the compleat musician, a perpetual challenge to the age of specialization...
Often chided for a lack of innovation in his music, Britten has wisely scorned the sterile world of experimentation for its own sake. With the maturation of his talents has come a taste for "the slender sound of, say, Mozart or Verdi or Mahler." An early enthusiasm for Beethoven is gone: "It's really quite sloppy, you know." Brahms he cannot abide. "I play through all his music every so often to see if I am right," Britten worried recently. "I usually find that I underestimated last time...
Dust & Cobwebs. "Britten has never claimed to be an innovator," argues Tenor Peter Pears, his longtime friend and the voice for whom most of his work is composed. "There blows through his vocal music, at least, a strong, revitalizing southeast wind which has rid English song of much accumulated dust and cobwebs. If Britten is no innovator, he is most certainly a renovator...