These are historical documents of importance from the Britten-Pears Library that are at last being allowed into the public domain. The account of Les illuminations, one of the first to have been given by Pears who had recently learned the work, while nowhere near as ‘finished’ an interpretation as his Decca version recorded in 1963 (9/95), shows the two young performers at their elatory best, disclosing their musical wares with a delightful spontaneity. Pears’s youthful high spirits are well caught in the far from poor recording. Virgil Thomson’s adverse comment that Pears had “neither correct French diction nor a properly trained voice”, disadvantages that were soon to be overcome, were at the time true, but the very rawness of the performance somehow matches the raw brilliance of the poetry and its setting.
The private recording of the Michelangelo Sonnets, made before the work’s London premiere and the 1942 HMV recording (4/93), reveals Pears not only in better voice but also in better command of Italian than he was of French. Even more than that HMV set made after the premiere, we catch a delicacy and intimacy of utterance that is most appealing and without the constraints of the studio, the performance more easily takes wing, evincing the obvious love between the interpreters.
The performance of the Sinfonia da Requiem was in fact the second, the premiere having been given the night before. Barbirolli and his virtuoso players seem in complete command of the score and, though Britten was later critical of the tempos of the outer movements (too slow), they seem to work well enough and at the time the composer described the reading as “very serious”. Obviously one misses here more than in the other pieces the benefits of modern sound, but it is good enough to judge the impact it must have had on its earliest audiences and shows Britten approaching the peak of his powers.
Technically, wonders have been done to what appear to be intractable originals. Radio ‘interference’ and scratches on the original material have virtually been eliminated, pitch corrected in Les illuminations and the ends of 78rpm sides matched up flawlessly. All Britten and Pear specialists will want the issue to which Colin Matthews contributes authoritative annotation.
'