In early November 1944 the young tenor Peter Pears received a postcard from The Old Mill at Snape: ‘I forgot to say in my other letter that I’ve heard the new Serenade “takes” – & they are terrific. The Dirge especially is a really super bit of singing, & the Orch. and Dennis are also fine. I’m a bit worried about the matching tho’ … Sing nicely – Love Ben.’ Pears was singing Ferrando in Così fan tutte with Sadler’s Wells in Glasgow but his mind was also full of the new music being written for him by his partner Benjamin Britten. The duo had just recorded one of these pieces, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op 31, with the dazzling young horn player Dennis Brain and Britten himself conducting the Boyd Neel String Orchestra – his largely unheralded recording debut as a conductor. Not often can a Gramophone Collection begin to trace the recording history of a musical masterpiece so close to its composition. The Serenade was written in March and April 1943, first performed on October 15 at London’s Wigmore Hall, and within the year, on May 25 and October 8, 1944, Decca recorded it at their new West Hampstead studios, so those ‘takes’ got to the composer pretty quickly!

Britten and Pears had only just returned to England in April 1942 after three heady years in North America – they left as friends and colleagues but returned as lovers and professional partners. They now had careers to re-establish, lives to rebuild and a new life together to negotiate, and the Serenade was to play an important part in this process. It was enthusiastically received at its premiere: ‘we had a lovely show, with wonderful enthusiasm and lovely notices’, wrote Britten to a friend back in America, whereas many of his pre-1939 works had been dismissed as ‘too clever by half’ – one reason why he was so keen to leave England. And it gave Pears a new public profile as a young English singer to take seriously. The 1944 recording was to be an invaluable calling card for both artists. Britten had already made some recordings as a pianist with both Pears and the soprano Sophie Wyss and with fellow pianist Clifford Curzon, and he also had experience on the other side of the microphone as a producer, having supervised in July 1943 (as a favour to its imprisoned composer) the private sessions of Michael Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra. The conductor for the Tippett was Berlin-born Walter Goehr, and it was Goehr who conducted his own orchestra in the premiere of Britten’s Serenade at the Wigmore Hall as part of a promotional evening for composers published by Boosey & Hawkes under the enterprising Viennese-born Erwin Stein.

From left to right: legendary producer John Culshaw, Britten and Pears in Orford, Suffolk in 1967; Pears features on three of the Serenade recordings (Brian Seed / Bridgeman Images)

Many sensed a fresh new spirit blowing through the Serenade and in setting some classical English poets Britten had seemingly freed himself from a long association with WH Auden. It would perhaps be too simplistic to suggest that he broke the attachment with Auden as the result of a growing confidence in his relationship with Pears and the ‘muse’ his voice provided but he was also happy now to take other literary advice, as from the young critic and writer Edward Sackville-West, who made suggestions for the Serenade and to whom it is dedicated. Pears had already been helping Britten with adapting George Crabbe’s poem ‘The Borough’ into an opera libretto for Peter Grimes and Auden’s innate sense of superiority, leading to a form of artistic bullying, was no longer needed on board. The Serenade was virtually a public declaration of a new beginning.

Blow, bugle, blow

The first arresting sonority in the 1944 recording is the sound of Dennis Brain’s immaculate horn-playing. As Britten said at the time, he ‘plays as flexibly and accurately as most clarinettists, & is a sweet and intelligent person as well’. Brain had asked Britten for a concerto upon first meeting the composer in 1942 but the result was a much less obvious response. The solution may or may not have been partly suggested by Stein (two birds with one stone) but it immediately adds a different dimension to the score. It becomes a cliché to talk about genius where Britten is concerned but the term is so often simply unavoidable: the framing device of a Prologue and Epilogue for solo horn (the latter played offstage) using unexpected but unforgettable natural harmonics is a perfect case in point. One characteristic he retained throughout his life was the ability to create immediately memorable ideas which can also act as reservoirs for further development. The opening of the Pastoral (setting the 17th-century Charles Cotton) moves magically from the Prologue’s clear open F to a shaded D flat and subtly echoes the horn’s opening rhythm. In tracing the vocal line at a distance the horn then ‘paints’ the sun’s shadow while simultaneously enriching both vocal and instrumental textures.

What is it then that marks out the 1944 recording? On one level it is simply as close as we get to the world premiere itself and the realisation of the composer’s intentions – in a sense, too, to the immediate sources of his sonic inspiration. Given his uncanny ear it is perhaps not surprising that everything he writes on paper registers perfectly as sound – but this recording is so clear and vivid that it literally set a template for all that were to follow. It is invaluable too in capturing for us the luminous and flexible clarity of Pears’s light early voice and the sovereign sonority of Brain’s sheer virtuosity. It was natural that Decca would select Boyd Neel’s String Orchestra to support, given that they had already successfully issued their recording of the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (written for them to play at the Salzburg Festival in 1937) together with the earlier Simple Symphony (9/38, 10/39). Moreover, Britten had just written his ingenious Prelude and Fugue for 18 strings for their 10th-anniversary concert and had tailored it to fit them like a glove, given that there were only 18 of them available! The players respond to every nuance in the Serenade with precision and Britten’s direction is confident and authoritative. This recording – to pile on another truism – is, literally, history in the making: a rare opportunity to eavesdrop, as it were, over the bubbling cauldron of creativity.

Pears gives a definitive performance under Eugene Goossens in 1953 (Hulton Deutsche / Getty Images)

The second recording of the Serenade was made in November 1953. Pears’s voice had grown and matured over the intervening decade and the opportunity to re‑record the work came with the first proper chance he was given to record Les illuminations of 1939 – a work written originally for Sophie Wyss but which Pears had soon made his own (see Andrew Farach-Colton’s Gramophone Collection, 3/09). Back in Decca’s West Hampstead studios, Pears was reunited with Dennis Brain and the New Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Eugene Goossens. It may seem odd to us now that Britten wasn’t automatically asked to conduct this himself – but the 1944 recording had in fact been something of an exception. Britten did not regard himself as a phenomenal conductor at this stage and was often very self-deprecating and doubtful as to his abilities. Goossens was a friend of long standing and so nothing untoward should be read into his presence here. Quite the contrary, in fact: he brings a sure sense of both poise and drive to his direction and draws playing of verve and sensitivity. The producer of this recording was the legendary John Culshaw and his stamp is apparent in the spacing he gives both tenor and horn – regardless of age, this is one of the finest balances found for this piece. Brain’s Prologue and Epilogue haunt the ear with a feeling at once of innocence and foreboding – an initial apprehension when on stage – and deep fulfilment as heard, to close, from afar.

By 1958 Britten had added for Pears a companion to the Serenade in the form of the Nocturne, Op 60, for tenor, strings and seven obbligato instruments. This was taken by Decca into Walthamstow Assembly Hall in September 1959, with Britten now conducting members of the LSO who included the horn player Barry Tuckwell. We now know that the Serenade was also recorded at these sessions – but we don’t know why it was never released. It was May 1963 by the time the same forces were assembled again in London’s Kingsway Hall to record the third version of the Serenade. This, to all intents and purposes, was regarded for years as the definitive modern version. It captures Pears in full authority – just a year after the War Requiem – and Tuckwell carries Brain’s mantle with technical ease (his tragic early death in a 1957 road accident had shocked the musical world) and a sense of slipping into the role quite naturally. By now Decca was firmly established as Britten’s ‘house’ label and the LSO his favoured ‘full’ orchestra. What strikes the ear is Pears’s ability to sustain the voice and to retain agility across the compass without strain. In the anonymous 15th-century Dirge the voice provides a chilling refrain repeated through nine verses and opening on a challenging high G before falling through an octave only to rise again for the next verse. Pears can spin this line with spine-tingling acuity and no change of timbre – something true of few others.

Beyond Pears and Britten

So thoroughly did Pears ‘own’ Britten’s legacy that other singers were naturally wary of trespassing on his territory. What would the Serenades of Wilfred Brown, Richard Lewis or Kenneth Bowen (among others) have been like? The first English tenor to venture on disc commercially was Robert Tear for EMI in 1970. He famously had a hot-and-cold relationship with Britten – and just in 1969‑70 had turned down the prospect of the tailor-made part of Lechmere in Owen Wingrave in favour of creating Dov in Tippett’s The Knot Garden for Covent Garden. This first recording by Tear – with Alan Civil and Neville Marriner in charge of the Northern Sinfonia – now seems a bit pallid in comparison with Pears. The younger singer naturally wishes to distance himself from the master but does so with moments of lightness that miss the darker undertones. These emerge more clearly in 1977 for DG in Chicago with Carlo Maria Giulini – an altogether heavier account with Tear’s voice richer but more idiosyncratic. Both discs will appeal especially to Tear devotees but paradoxically now sound ‘too much’ like Tear for comfort.

We can sadly but quickly dispense with the foreign singers who bravely put a toe in the chilly waters of the North Sea – Peter Schreier in Munich in 1967 and Christoph Prégardien with Osmo Vänskä in 1991. Both are technically and musically impeccable but fall at the inevitable linguistic hurdles – Schreier quite comically (a Gramophone review referred to it as ‘“Allo Allo” English’) and Prégardien more clinically. The one American tenor to enter the lists presents a very robust approach and Jerry Hadley in 1989 for Nimbus surmounts every challenge bravely. It is hard not to hear him now without the tragic shadow of his subsequent life adding darkness where it isn’t. But this remains a noble memorial enriched by the forensic playing of Anthony Halstead, who in terms of balance seems closer to the listener than does Hadley.

The one tenor who did perform the Serenade frequently under Pears’s nose was Gerald English – and by some fluke a live 1969 concert with Barbirolli in Cologne emerged on ICA Classics in 2013. Anyone who knows and loves the fabulously evocative setting of Tennyson’s Nocturne with its pulsing strings, echoing horn-calls and often exultant tenor should try this funereal version for a taste of the truly macabre. Having heard English in the flesh a few years after this performance I can testify that this wasn’t the tempo he took then – but the nasal whine and often strangulated sounds seem closer at times to the expressionist and surreal than to anything appropriate to Britten’s natural, even Purcellian word-setting. It would have been wiser to keep this account safely locked in the WDR archive.

Digital Serenades

Of the 1988‑96 vintage, quite a number of performances are truly outstanding and any fears expressed (quite commonly) at the time of Britten’s death in 1976 that his music would die with Pears are eloquently exploded. It is also a tribute to the clarity and consistency of Britten’s score that the vast majority of these recordings adhere closely to the spirit of his own performances. One of the finest comes from the sorely underrated Martyn Hill, who sings with strength and intelligence in a symbiotic partnership with Richard Hickox for Virgin in 1988. Also in 1988, Neil Mackie for EMI carries Pears’s own imprimatur and has the advantage of Britten’s latter-day assistant Steuart Bedford at the helm; but he emerges as something of a characterless carbon copy (despite singing ‘sleet’ instead of ‘fleet’ with his teacher’s approval in the Dirge). Third of the 1988 vintage is the peerless Anthony Rolfe Johnson for Chandos with a polished SNO under Bryden Thomson. He sings with golden-voiced magnificence and is arguably the first singer since Pears to make the music absolutely his own without any need of artifice or effort: this is simply glorious singing and purely in that sense it remains unsurpassed.

Anthony Rolfe Johnson: golden-voiced magnificence in 1988

Also in a class of his own is Philip Langridge – less mellifluous, perhaps, but characterised by a sinewy brilliance which is unmistakable. As caught in 1994 by Collins Classics (now Naxos), however, the voice sometimes strains in its top register, expressive though this can sound: this is the darkest-hued Serenade on disc. By contrast, Ian Bostridge in 1995 is fleet of foot and unpretentious but misses the depths of the score where the equally youthful-sounding John Mark Ainsley (also for EMI in 1995) does not. Sadly deleted at present, his version is blessed by the beneficent presence of the miraculous young David Pyatt – for my money the best horn player since Brain – and an interpretation to treasure, which if available could well have been one of my top choices. Adrian Thompson for Naxos (1996) is sadly no more than reliable and is less agile or expressive than his contemporaries.

Tenors of today

The younger generation of singers – those still currently active – are strongly represented in 2003 by Toby Spence with the Scottish Ensemble on Linn. His is the most vulnerable-sounding version and in many ways the most moving. The odd frailty in the upper register curiously adds to this effect, but the voice is recorded just that bit too distantly. Admirers of Ian Bostridge may relish him in 2005 with Simon Rattle but a decade has added mannerism and preciousness to the former innocent radiance and the Berlin strings are (perhaps surprisingly) never superior to those of Bamberg under Ingo Metzmacher – this would be the Bostridge choice. James Gilchrist and Mark Padmore share a Cambridge pedigree as well as sterling vocal intelligence and musical insight. Just as performances both are superb in their own ways but Channel Classics for Gilchrist is diffuse in overall sound whereas Harmonia Mundi for Padmore is close and airless, thus making the Britten Sinfonia sound too small and claustrophobic around him. Linn for Allan Clayton in 2013 had the supreme good sense to go to Snape Maltings and this unique building immediately places a golden halo around Richard Watkins’s rich-toned horn. Of all today’s singers Clayton has the greatest colour and range, character and versatility, and he is matched in imagination by the vibrant Aldeburgh Strings.

One postlude. Britten never meant us to know that he had composed another movement for the proposed Serenade in 1943 – a calmly voluptuous setting of Tennyson’s ‘Now sleeps the crimson petal’. It ended up among Erwin Stein’s posthumous papers and has been recorded (with permission) by Mackie, Prégardien and Gilchrist. There were probably all kinds of reasons why Britten left it out before first performance, recording and publication. Only Gilchrist’s daringly tender and erotic account convinces as music but it also confirms that Britten was right to abandon it.

The Serenade as it stands is perfect – how so, however, is impossible to analyse. A visit to The Red House at Aldeburgh today tells of the delight taken by Pears and Britten in regularly rearranging their extensive collection of paintings. But only Britten ultimately knew how to put in sequence his disparate settings of varied poems to create the ideal effect both individually and collectively. And Pears still reigns supreme when it comes to bringing that collection alive.

THE HISTORIC CHOICE

Pears, Brain; Boyd Neel Orch / Britten

(Decca)

More than just a historic document: simply listen to Britten’s mini-Mozart horn concerto with obbligato tenor in the Hymn of Ben Johnson, when with quicksilver brilliance and mercurial ease Pears and Brain capture Britten’s new neoclassicsm to perfection.

THE CLASSIC CHOICE

Rolfe Johnson, Thompson; SNO / Thomson

(Chandos)

Even a golden voice can conjure sinister unease in the elegy of Blake’s Sick Rose after Michael Thompson’s serpentine horn uses Britten’s daring reinterpretation of dogmatic serialism to embody the worm at the heart of beauty wreaking destruction and death.

THE MODERN CHOICE

Clayton, Watkins; Aldeburgh Stgs / Daunert

(Linn)

You can feel the spirit of Britten abroad in his concert hall as the horn leaves the stage during Keats’s Sonnet, leaving Allan Clayton to set the perfect seal on slumber with magical viola harmonics sounding like a muted horn in the distance at the word ‘Amen’.

THE DEFINITIVE CHOICE

Pears, Brain; New SO / Goossens

(Decca Eloquence)

Some over the decades have disparaged Pears’s unique voice, Dudley Moore’s brilliant parody of both composer and singer notwithstanding. But even if it can still be thought of as an ‘acquired taste’, there is no doubt in my mind that he was one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century and this definitive and underrated recording is simply irreplaceable.

Selected Discography

Recording Date / Artists / Record company (review date)

1944 Peter Pears, Dennis Brain; Boyd Neel Stg Orch / Benjamin Britten Decca 468 801-2DM (12/45, 8/86)

1953 Peter Pears, Dennis Brain; New SO / Eugene Goossens Decca Eloquence ELQ476 8470 (11/54)

1963 Peter Pears, Barry Tuckwell; LSO / Benjamin Britten Decca 417 153-2DH (9/64, 8/86)

1967 Peter Schreier, Günther Opitz; MDR SO / Herbert Kegel Brilliant 94728

1969 Gerald English, Hermann Baumann; WDR SO, Cologne / John Barbirolli ICA Classics ICAC5096 (8/13)

1970 Robert Tear, Alan Civil; Northern Sinf / Neville Marriner EMI/Warner 352286-2 (3/71)

1977 Robert Tear, Dale Clevenger; Chicago SO / Carlo Maria Giulini DG 423 239-2GC (1/80)

1988 Martyn Hill, Frank Lloyd; CLS / Richard Hickox Virgin/Erato 349923-2 (12/89)

1988 Neil Mackie, Barry Tuckwell; SCO / Steuart Bedford EMI/Warner (37 discs) 217526-2 (12/88)

1988 Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Michael Thompson; SNO / Bryden Thomson Chandos CHAN10192 (6/89)

1989 Jerry Hadley, Anthony Halstead; ESO / William Boughton Nimbus NI5234 (9/90)

1991 Christoph Prégardien, Ib Lanzky-Otto; Tapiola Sinfonietta / Osmo Vänskä BIS BIS-CD540 (8/92)

1994 Philip Langridge, Frank Lloyd; ECO / Steuart Bedford Naxos 8 557199 (12/94, 3/05)

1995 Ian Bostridge, Marie-Luise Neunecker; Bamberg SO / Ingo Metzmacher
EMI/Warner 2435 56871-5; 723547-2 (8/97)

1996 Adrian Thompson, Michael Thompson; Bournemouth Sinfonietta / David Lloyd-Jones Naxos 8 553834 (6/98)

2003 Toby Spence, Martin Owen; Scottish Ens / Clio Gould Linn BKD226 (5/05)

2005 Ian Bostridge, Radek Baborák; BPO / Simon Rattle EMI/Warner 558049-2 (12/05)

2011 James Gilchrist, Jasper de Waal; Amsterdam Sinfonietta / Candida Thompson
Channel Classics CCSSA32213 (3/13)

2011 Mark Padmore, Stephen Bell; Britten Sinf / Jacqueline Shave Harmonia Mundi HMU80 7552 (6/12)

2013 Allan Clayton, Richard Watkins; Aldeburgh Stgs / Markus Däunert Linn CKD478 (5/16)

This article originally appeared in the October 2020 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue – subscribe today