Word: britten
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...Britten: Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (the Boyd Neel Orchestra, Boyd Neel conducting; London FFRR, 6 sides). This is one of Britten's best early works; sometimes dramatic and austerely orchestrated, it is also obviously an ancestor of Peter Grimes. Recording: good...
...past three years, Manhattan concert-and operagoers have heard plenty of English Composer Benjamin Britten's music (Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia). This week, a Town Hall audience turned out to hear some Britten music played by the composer himself. As accompanist for English Tenor Peter Pears, who created the leading roles in all of Britten's major operas, "Benjy" proved himself as astute on the platform at the piano as he is in his parlor with a pen. When the nicely varied and nicely performed program of original Brittens, Britten-arranged Purcell and English folk songs...
...first time lean, tweedy Benjamin Britten, 35, had visited the U.S.; as an unknown composer he had lived in & around New York City for three years (1939-42). But it was the first time he had come as a world celebrity...
...arrival, he had to hide out in a mid-Manhattan hotel to try to get some rehearsing done. Even though Britten and Pears have sung and played virtually the same program all over Europe in the past few years, they had to make sure they had all of their music. Britten forgets it as soon as he writes it. He confesses with a crinkly smile: "I seem to have the kind of mind that gives everything out and keeps nothing in. Amazing as it seems, I can't play my own music without the score...
After a dozen more campus and concerthall audiences in the U.S. and Canada, Composer Britten and Tenor Pears will fly back to England. There Britten will plunge into an enthusiasm of his own: his seventh opera, his first with Novelist E. M. (A Passage to India) Forster as librettist...