Benjamin Britten - Serenade; Les Illuminations; Nocturne (Ian Bostridge)

Information

Composer: Benjamin Britten

• Les Illuminations, Op. 18
• Serenade, Op. 31
• Nocturne, Op. 60

Ian Bostridge, tenor

Radek Baborák, horn

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Simon Rattle, conductor

Date: 2005

Label: EMI

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Review

This recording followed live performances at the Salzburg Easter Festival in April. For that reason if no other it offers a profoundly considered and technically immaculate traversal of Britten’s three great and varied cycles for tenor and orchestra, conceived with Pears’s voice in mind. Authoritative as the recordings by composer and tenor may be, there is plenty of room for new insights into such complex and inspired scores.

Bostridge’s particular gift for lighting texts from within, and projecting so immediately their images, comes into its own arrestingly in the Nocturne. With his vocal agility and vital word-painting at their most assured – allied to surely the most virtuoso account of the obbligato parts yet heard, and Rattle supremely alert – this reading sets a standard hard to equal. Add a perfectly balanced recording and you have an ideal result.

Not that the accounts of the earlier cycles are far behind in going to the heart of the matter. Bostridge catches all the fantasy and irony of Les illuminations and projects the text with a biting delivery that stops just the right side of caricature. Rattle and his orchestra are once again aware of Britten’s subtleties of rhythm and instrumentation.

The Serenade, most easily accessible of the three works, demonstrates the advantages of recording after live performances. Everything seems fresh-minted and immediate, nowhere more so than in Radek Baborák’s bold yet sensitive horn playing. Some of the verbal over-emphases that are now part of Bostridge’s vocal persona (and were absent in his earlier recording of the work for EMI, 8/97) might not have been approved by the composer but for the most part they second the plangent beauty of his voice, which is evident throughout these very personal and satisfying interpretations. Bostridge writes illuminating notes in the booklet, too, adding to the disc’s value.

— Alan Blyth

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Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was a leading British composer, pianist and conductor. Trained at the Royal College of Music, he gained early acclaim with Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge and achieved international prominence with the opera Peter Grimes (1945). His major stage works include Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, alongside innovative church parables such as Curlew River. Co-founder of the Aldeburgh Festival, he also composed celebrated song cycles, choral works including the War Requiem, and notable orchestral and chamber music.

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Ian Bostridge (born 1964 in London) is an English tenor. He holds degrees in history and philosophy from Oxford and Cambridge and began his professional singing career at 27. Celebrated for his interpretations of Schubert and Britten, Bostridge has performed at top festivals and venues worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, La Scala and the Salzburg Festival. Acclaimed for roles like Aschenbach in Death in Venice and Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw, he has collaborated with leading orchestras and conductors. His albums have won major awards, including a Grammy and the 2020 ICMA Vocal Recording of the Year.

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