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Britten Abroad
A collection of songs by Benjamin Britten set in Italian, Russian, French & German
Susan Gritton soprano
Mark Padmore tenor
Iain Burnside piano
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" ... a powerfully eloquent performance ... . Iain Burnside is a model accompanist. An outstanding disc"
The Guardian, 5 Stars ***** |
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"Gritton all but steals the album with the haunting Il est Quelqu'un"
The Times |
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"The Pushkin settings of The Poet’s Echo (1965) demand dramatic, intense colours, and the soprano Susan Gritton duly supplies them ... Throughout, the pianist Iain Burnside traverses this vast, impressive terrain with stylish ease"
The Sunday Times |
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" ... ingenious programme ... Susan Gritton's rich-hued timbre and linguistic mastery reap rewards in the Russian and German cycles"
The Daily Telegraph |
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"Mark Padmore's singing of the Michaelangelo Sonnets has all the grace of the young Pears without his mannerisms ... Iain Burnside is a tower of strength throughout"
The Sunday Telegraph |
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Britten’s extraordinary skill and
fluency for setting his native
language has sometimes obscured
his flair for his settings of foreign
poetry; some of his very finest are
in German, Latin, Italian and
Russian.
Susan Gritton and Mark Padmore
perform these songs with vigour,
marvellously accompanied by Iain
Burnside and do great justice to
songs which many would regard
as being the most distinctive and
very finest examples of Britten’s
art.
Four French Folksong Arrangements
for high voice and piano
| 1 |
La Noël passée |
| 2 |
Voici le Printemps |
| 3 |
Fileuse |
| 4 |
Le roi s'en va-t'en chasse |
Um Mitternacht (1960)
for high voice and piano
Text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, Op.61
for tenor and piano
Texts by Friedrich Hölderlin
| 1 |
Menschebeifall |
| 2 |
Die Heimat |
| 3 |
Sokrates und Alcibiades |
| 4 |
Die Jugend |
| 5 |
Halfte des Lebens |
| 6 |
Die Linien des Lebens |
Four French Folksong Arrangements
for high voice and piano
| 1 |
La belle est au jardin d'amour |
| 2 |
Il est quelqu'un sur terre |
| 3 |
Eho! Eho! |
| 4 |
Quand j'étais chez mon père |
Britten’s extraordinary skill and fluency for setting his own native language has sometimes obscured the brilliance with which he embraced a wide range of foreign poetry throughout his career. In fact Britten left a series of exquisite settings, some of his very finest, in French, Italian, Latin, German, Russian, Scot dialect and Medieval English; and the role-call of poets attests to the diversity and sophistication of his literary tastes, including the work of Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Artur Rimbaud, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Friedrich Hölderlin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander Pushkin, Bertolt Brecht and William Soutar. The earliest of these works (written when Britten was just fourteen) was the Quatre chansons françaises, settings of Hugo and Verlaine for high voice and orchestra, written in the summer of 1928 for his parents’ twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. Les Illuminations followed a decade later; Latin settings were a constant throughout his career, for his many liturgical settings and notably in War Requiem and the Cantata misericordium; we find Scots dialect in his Souter settings, Who are these children? and his authentic response to the challenge of early English texts is demonstrated in his mystery-play settings, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac and Noye’s Fludde, and profoundly so in one of his very last works, the choral setting of eight medieval English lyrics, Sacred and Profane. But Britten’s settings of Italian, Russian, French and German, performed here by Susan Gritton, Mark Padmore and Iain Burnside are certainly amongst the most distinctive and very finest examples of his art, each fashioned specifically for a much-loved and favoured artist.
© Dr John Evans
05.12.07
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