Although Les illuminations is written for high voice, it is dedicated to and was first performed by the late Sophie Wyss. In the natural course of events, Sir Peter Pears took it up and recorded it twice. His second version, with Britten conducting, is available on CD (Decca) and although it obviously has many points of interest and illumination (no pun intended), he does not convince me that it suits a male voice.
Recently, however, Martyn Hill has recorded it (Virgin Classics) and now Anthony Rolfe Johnson who, I must say, comes nearest to breaking down my—probably quite untenable, merely personal—prejudice against the use of a tenor. For one thing, he has the best voice qua voice of the three I have mentioned and he is almost the equal of Pears in intelligent projection of Rimbaud's extraordinary texts. Jane Glover, conducting the London Mozart Players in a bright, resonant acoustic, sets a fast and vigorous, almost hectic pace and the recording captures the detailed attention paid to the filigree of the writing for strings.
The playing by the obbligato instruments in the Nocturne is splendid and the potent atmosphere of this work, switching between dream and nightmare, is vividly conveyed. The first entry of the voice is magically sung by Rolfe Johnson. For Brittenites who cannot live by Pears alone, this is the ideal alternative version.
The wonderful scoring in Nocturne represents the maturity of the precocious genius of 18 who wrote the Sinfonietta. This must have sounded a dangerously radical piece to the Royal College of Music professors in 1933, but today, amid the Schoenbergian cellular method of development, we can recognize a characteristically English voice. Glover's interpretation, like the playing, is astute, precise and sympathetic.'