Here, so to speak, are the first gramophone obsequies for Sir Peter Pears, although presumably they were planned before the great tenor's death in April. The CD brings together three of Britten's finest song-cycles, the Serenade, Les illuminations and the Nocturne. The performances, all conducted by the composer, date from the 1960s. That of the Serenade is the third Pears made (actually in 1963) and although enunciation of the text is as good as ever, the voice is occasionally unsteady and the tone thin. Nor is Barry Tuckwell's horn playing ideal. It is too loud, for one thing, and never wholly captures the music's mood of evening magic and poetry. In the Rimbaud songs, recorded in 1966 and issued the following year. Pears may be strained by the high tessitura at times but this, his second recording of Les illuminations, is remarkable for its youthful joi de vivre and its thrilling response to the text's fantastic imagery. Britten draws superb playing from the ECO, full of life and colour. We hear the Nocturne too rarely these days. Perhaps its occasional mannerisms have palled for some listeners, but the high imaginative quality of most of the music is breathtaking. With this singer and these chosen obbligato instrumentalists this performance is definitive. The recordings have transferred well to CD: there is the odd bit of tape hiss, the occasional 'bubble', but who cares—particularly at 72'49''?
If it may be thought I have been cool about the Serenade recording above, I can only say that I judge it by the original 1944 recording (released in 1945), made seven months after the first performance, and now reissued with two other song-cycles on a mono LP (the second, 1954 version, was also on Decca—ECS507, 10/69—nla). All the startling and wonderful freshness of the work, so well remembered from early performances, is enshrined here, Pears's voice young and flexible (this is the tenor one recalls as Smetana's Vasek and Mozart's Ferrando with Sadler's Wells). And Dennis Brain—well, he was incomparable, that's all. It is a pity the marvellous Hardy settings of Winter Words are split between two sides. They and the Michelangelo Sonnets were recorded in 1954 and issued two years later. Again I prefer the first Michelangelo recording, made by HMV in 1942 and reissued on LP (RLS748, 6/80 --nla), but the mature mastery of the second effort is deeply rewarding. Inevitably all these performances will be regarded as touchstones for all time and to hear them again is both moving and instructive.'