A personal history of Britten

It’s overstating things a bit, but I owe my existence to Benjamin Britten. Not directly, I concede, unless my parents and the Britten Estate have been keeping a sensational secret from me; but it is probably accurate to surmise that if my mother hadn’t taken part in a performance of Noye’s Fludde in her mid-teens and switched to A-level Music as a result, she wouldn’t have applied to study the subject at university, she wouldn’t have met my father, and, several years down the line, I wouldn’t have been born. So the guy’s got a lot to answer for.

I’ve been doing my bit to repay the debt I owe Britten by spending a lot of my adult life getting to know his music. My acquaintance of Britten in childhood was fleeting but vivid. When I was about five my father, a teacher by profession, conducted a performance of Noye’s Fludde in a local church, which I attended. I don’t recall it particularly vividly, but I know that the music of Sem, Ham and Jaffett’s song, ‘Father, I am all readye bowne’, stayed in my head long afterwards.

A year or two later, at school, my teacher Miss Loveridge used the first Sea Interlude from Peter Grimes in a Music and Movement class. (Either that or as music played to welcome children filing into morning assembly, which I believe was on weekly rotation; but that seems unlikely given the norm was Semprini playing popular classics.) I fell utterly in love with the music, to the extent that I badgered my mother to ask Miss Loveridge what it was (that I had the nerve to ask her myself seems unlikely). I bought or was given a tape of the Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Grimes and the Sinfonia da Requiem played by the RLPO and Libor Pešek, though I only got to know the Interludes.

When I did A-level Music myself, we used the marvellous London Anthology (now sadly no more; it was revised the following year to enable pupils to study Carl Perkins and the music from E.T.), and the set of extracts allocated to us included part of the mad scene from Act 3 of Peter Grimes, opening at ‘To hell with all your mercy!’ and ending with the spoken dialogue where Balstrode tells Grimes to sail out and sink his boat. By some way it was the most emotionally gutting piece we studied. Jessie Taylor and I sat side by side in G12 while Mrs Shaw put on the Britten/Pears recording of the extract, and we listened along with the score. At the end there was a stunned silence. A piece of music had never made me feel quite like that before.

‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’

Later that year, I went on a residential course for A-level Music students at Villiers Park in Middleton Stoney, just outside Bicester. It was exciting to meet people with passions similar to mine. I had a great time doing two-piano improvisations with a boy called John. We stayed in touch, writing each other occasional letters (this sounds improbable, but I suspect we were both old-fashioned; I didn’t get email until 2001), and eventually reunited at university. A trip to an Oxford Bach Choir concert at the Sheldonian Theatre was organised as part of the course. Among other items the choir sang Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb, a magical discovery for me. We all studied the piece closely beforehand, and afterwards wrote reviews of the concert. Mine was voted worthy of submission for publication in a local news sheet (and still exists online, though modesty and shame forbid my linking to it here).

In summer 2001 I played the piano duet (with my mother) in another production of Noye’s Fludde, conducted by my father in the inaugural Frome Festival. Everything seems to come back to Noye with me.

I’ll be singing the Choral Dances from Gloriana, the Five Flower Songs and the Te Deum and Jubilate in a concert in this year’s Frome Festival. I’m so pleased to be taking part in an event, however small, that is listed on the Britten 100 website. It’s a brilliant resource for finding performances of Britten’s works, among other things, and I hope it may continue in some fashion after the centenary year is up.

If it hadn’t been for the website I wouldn’t have happened upon a performance of The Little Sweep in Norwich last month, which it was a great pleasure to attend. I haven’t set myself a specific Britten-related mission this year, but I certainly intend to see some of the operas I don’t know that well. I’ve already seen a student production of The Rape of Lucretia that was quite superb, and will be seeing Gloriana later in the year, and The Burning Fiery Furnace, one of my favourite Britten works and one that is all too seldom performed. I’m also hopeful of my first Screw since June 2009 (and my third in total).

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently listening to unfamiliar Britten works and recordings, among which I have found many treasures, but they can wait for another post.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

2012 threesomes

Before we settle too cosily into 2013 I am going to recycle the format I stole from Becca’s Blog last year and look back at my cultural year.

Top 3 books
My greatest joy has been in reading P.G. Wodehouse, with three Jeeves and Wooster books late in the year reminding me what an unutterably funny writer he is. Sadly I only have about 90 of his books left to read. But if I’m going to choose individual titles, I shall go for Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, the wit and imagination of which was an unexpected delight, Winifred Watson’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, a sparkling and cheeky variation on the Cinderella story, and Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens. Completed in 1848, it’s not Dickens’ greatest novel, but it shows the stirrings of a greater ambition that would be realised in the masterpieces he wrote in the following twenty years, and in the likes of Captain Cuttle, Solomon Gills, Walter Gay, Toots and Florence Dombey it contains some of his sweetest and most lovable characters.

Top 3 CDs (classical)
Late in 2011 I heard this Radio 4 documentary which contained some beautiful guitar arrangements of French piano music. I contacted the producer, who kindly informed me that the CD used was Rêverie by the Groningen Guitar Duo. I have enjoyed getting acquainted with it this year. An article in Gramophone alerted me to a 1999 disc of French Airs de Cour performed by Catherine King, Charles Daniels and Jacob Heringman, which is superb and contains much unfamiliar and charming repertoire. I haven’t bought a great many CDs released this year, but the disc of choral music by Howells sung by the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge under Stephen Layton is one that stands out. The programme is inspired, beginning with the Hymn for St Cecilia and ending with ‘All my hope on God is founded’. The recent discs of Howells from Hereford and St John’s, Cambridge have missed a trick in not including any of Howells’ hymn tunes. I could have done with one or two more on the Trinity CD.

Top 3 CDs (other)
I have been recommending Todd Rundgren’s 1972 double album Something/Anything? to all and sundry this year, and have given it to people as presents. It’s enormously sugary and 90% of it is seventh chords, but I love it. I have also been spending a lot of time with Para One’s soundtrack to Céline Sciamma’s film Naissance des Pieuvres. I saw the film two or three years ago. It’s a coming-of-age drama centred around a swimming pool, a fine piece of work, but I think the music stands on its own. It’s sumptuously atmospheric, and very watery. And I was lucky to find a cheap copy of this William Sheller anthology. It’s been lovely discovering songs of his I didn’t know before.

Top 3 films
I’ve already written about my favourite new films of last year, but what of those I came across on the TV? I watched quite a lot of them. Omitting those I’d seen before (though I would like to give an honourable mention to Basil Dearden’s Victim, which came across as a bold minor masterpiece that I hadn’t acknowledged before), I have narrowed the list down to three, two of which are very recent films anyway. Firstly The Arbor, Clio Barnard’s audacious drama-documentary about the life of Andrea Dunbar, which marries documentary footage with new interviews lip-synched by actors. At times it takes the breath away. Then Hirokazu Koreeda’s Still Walking (Aruitemo Aruitemo), a gentle, illuminating drama about a family convening to mark the anniversary of a son’s death. It has been compared by some to the films of Ozu, which is not unwarranted praise. And thirdly, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s remarkable religious melodrama Ordet, which packs an astonishing emotional punch at its climax.

Top 3 live music
I love instrumental and chamber music, but my favourite concerts in 2012 were on a larger scale. I don’t always like the Royal Albert Hall as a venue, but I find it’s better if a) there are a lot of performers to fill the space; and b) you’re not too far away from them. I was lucky to be in the side stalls for two excellent Proms – Les Troyens in July, and Bernstein’s Mass in August. Both were thrilling. Smaller but no less exhilarating was English Touring Opera’s production of Britten’s Albert Herring at West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge. I hadn’t realised how fun and how funny it is; I’d certainly never laughed at an opera before. I hope to see plenty more Britten on stage in his centenary year.

Top 3 theatre
I’m including musicals again. One of my choices last year was the Chichester production of Sweeney Todd, then about to transfer to London. I went to see it three more times after the transfer, and I’m choosing it again. I suppose this is about as close as I get to being a fanboy. I marvel at Sondheim’s genius, and vow to get to know more of his work this year. Company is on at the ADC in a month, so that can be the first step. Then, the revival of Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s London Road at the National Theatre, a haunting and upsetting musical based on verbatim transcripts of interviews with the residents of London Road in Ipswich, in the aftermath of the 2006 prostitute murders. It sounds unpleasantly sensationalist; in fact it’s just sensational, and grows in stature with the passage of time. And lastly, the all-male Shakespeare’s Globe production of Twelfth Night, which I went to twice, firstly at the Globe and then at the Apollo Theatre. The play’s a masterpiece, of course, but this production is a dream. The grace and sweep and composure of Mark Rylance’s performance as Olivia defy description. He is the finest actor I have ever had the privilege to watch, and I am going to see his Richard III soon. You still have time to catch them before they close next month.

On the subject of theatre, I feel bound also to credit Gatz, the unabridged theatrical adaptation of The Great Gatsby staged by Elevator Repair Service at the Noel Coward Theatre, Helen Edmundson and Neil Hannon’s captivating musical of Swallows and Amazons that I caught at Cambridge’s Arts Theatre, and a number of comedy gigs (Sheeps, Jonny Sweet, Tom Basden, Tim Key, the excellent Staple/face). There is one more event I would like to mention that doesn’t quite fit into any of the categories above: Alex Preston’s discussion with Richard Holloway at the Cambridge Union as part of Cambridge Wordfest in April. It felt a great privilege to see Holloway in person, a wry, humane, sympathetic and wise man. I’m sure I will read his acclaimed memoir, Leaving Alexandria, this year. Let’s all of us have a good one!

Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen

Hello. I’m off to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College this afternoon, which is always a joyous experience, and then I will be busy doing various Christmassy things, so I will take this opportunity to wish all readers of this blog a Merry Christmas. If you want to listen to the carol service, it’s live on Radio 4 at 3pm, and you can play Spot the Gareth in the televised service on BBC2 later in the afternoon. It was recorded a couple of weeks ago, but if there was ever a facade that it was live then even Stephen Cleobury has given up pretending.

This is a Brahms chorale prelude on ‘Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen’ that will be played before the service today. It’s one of my favourite pieces of Christmas music. I remember when I first heard it – it was on some enchanted evening, possibly across a crowded room. It’s meant for the organ, but you can play it on the piano, though you generally don’t, but in fact I generally do, not being an organist. Anyway, have a good one.

Deliver me

Today is All Souls’ Day, the day in the Christian calendar dedicated to the remembrance of the dead. Throughout churches in the UK and further afield, choirs will be singing Requiem Masses. I will be taking part in a liturgical performance of Fauré’s Requiem myself. It will be a solemn occasion.

But remembering the dead doesn’t have to be a joyless affair. This is my major-key recomposition of Fauré’s ‘Libera me’ (‘Deliver me, O Lord, from death eternal on that fearful day’). It stems from a simple modal substitution and incorporates Rutter-style harmonic slushiness. It would be falsely humble of me to claim that this isn’t an improvement on the original. You will come to that conclusion without my aid anyway. A song about the day of fiery judgement seems to demand a warmer treatment than Fauré provides, hence the necessity of this revised version. I think we’re going to stick to the original in our performance this evening, but that’s the C of E for you, shamefully hidebound. Enjoy!