Britten wrote A Boy was Born, his first masterpiece, when he was 19. The only previous recording was made back in 1958. This is a difficult work, for listeners as well as singers, and because some of the writing was originally found rather ungrateful, Britten was persuaded in 1955 to simplify it, but the work is still too seldom performed and too little known. It fills one side of this LP and richly reward repeated hearings. The six variations are tightly and satisfyingly linked thematically, and it was an astonishing flash of genius to base a slow one on Christina Rossetti's In the bleak midwinter ('bleak' is harmonized with marvellously evocative discords), and then to add in jig rhythm a setting of the mediaeval words He bare him up, he bare him down. The mixture shouldn't please, but it does.
The three works on the other side run to some 36 minutes without any decline in the admirable sound quality. The anthem Britten wrote for the wedding of Lord Harewood and Marion Stein has not been recorded before. Ronald Duncan's words may now seem embarrassingly optimistic, but they have a general application we can accept easily enough. Janet Coxwell produces a lovely, clear bell-like quality in the last section, as she also does at the end of the Te Deum. But Rejoice in the Lamb is much the most appealing of the works on this side. Britten selected the words from various parts of the long, crazily imaginative poem Christopher Smart wrote in a mad house in the 1750s, and because the cantata had been commissioned (in the war) by a Northampton church, the difficulties, though numerous, are never excessive. The mood varies from the humorous, with the organ miaowing for ''my cat Jeoffry'', to the intensely tragic (''I am under the same accusation with my Saviour''). Mary Seers who has the cat section is first rate, as are the other three male soloists. The choir sings with assurance and beautiful tone, their very soft singing being a joy. This record reflects great credit on all concerned. Recommended.'