★★★★★
Composer, one-time Britten disciple and admirable NMC founder Colin Matthews reminds us in his introduction that, while Britten gave only 95 of his works opus numbers, he wrote well over a thousand in total. Not all of them are worthy of resurrection, but these scores for stage and radio were composed at the height of his early, pre-Grimes powers. None is major; all show the composer's skill at writing to order...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-09-04
★★★★★
It's fitting that the late Alexander Ivashkin's valedictory recording is a premiere of a piece many didn't know existed. Ivashkin's tireless scholarship and selfless promotion of composers yielded up many treasures, particularly the works of Schnittke and Gubaidulina. But Britten was always Ivashkin's great love, and he has done the cello fraternity a great service by preparing a performing edition of the composer's very first Sonata for Cello in A, written when he was just 13 years old...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-07-22
★★★★★
Slowly but surely, Maxim Vengerov is working his way through some of the 20th century's greatest violin concertos, and it's no coincidence that his friend and musical mentor Mstislav Rostropovich is on hand to conduct. Slava knew Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and had music written for him by the two Brits whose concertos appear on this new CD: Britten and Walton...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2014-07-09
★★★★★
Britten's Cello Symphony has been one of his least-performed works, despite the composer's comment that it was 'the finest thing I've written'. So the centenary-inspired outpouring of Cello Symphonies on disc is welcome. It's a reflection of the number of 'big beasts' out in the cello firmament prepared to do battle, and in this live recording Zuill Bailey proves himself equal to the task...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-05-20
★★★★★
This performance captures the sense of dislocation essential to this chilling ghost story, but (intentionally or not) extends it to the cast, who periodically seem detached from the action. Christopher Dingle
- www.classical-music.com
2014-04-29
★★★★★
This Saint Nicolas is involving from the outset. Jacqueline Shave's lean, spiky account of the violin obbligato in the Introduction sets a tensely expectant atmosphere, and it's clear from the summoning of the Saint that Stephen Cleobury has the choral forces sharply focused, and attentive to Britten's dynamic stipulations.
There's some slippery ensemble in 'The Birth of Nicolas', but this is compensated for by the freshness and enthusiasm of the King's boy treble voices...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-04-29
★★★★★
'Who can turn skies back?' demands Peter Grimes. Well, the inventive film director, for one, who cleverly grafts extra moody Suffolk cloudscapes into this already unique performance, staged live to a pre-recorded orchestral track on Aldeburgh beach in 2013.
Opera coexists with the real world rather uneasily: Aida at the Pyramids and Turandot in the Forbidden City weren't always as effective as I expected...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-04-28
★★★★★
After decades in which Britten's own 1963 recording of the War Requiem reigned supreme, a host of fine new recordings now jostle for supremacy. These three new issues all boast top-drawer soloists, well-prepared choirs and dynamic orchestras. So which delivers the most complete experience of this powerful work?
No one has gathered the ideal cast. Antonio Pappano perhaps gets closest. The eloquent Ian Bostridge has that liquid, Pears-ian shimmer in his voice...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-03-04
★★★★★
The Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood killed himself in London in 1953, aged 31. He had been a close friend of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, and gave the first performances of the revised version of Britten's Piano Concerto in 1946. Six months later he recorded the concerto for the BBC, with Basil Cameron and the LSO...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-02-07
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