Britten Double Concerto; (Les) Illuminations; Bridge Variations
Jurowski tackles some of Britten’s early works with uneven results
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Benjamin Britten
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: LPO
Magazine Review Date: 6/2009
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: LPO0037

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Double Concerto for Violin and Viola |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Alexander Zemstov, Viola Benjamin Britten, Composer London Philharmonic Orchestra Pieter Schoeman, Violin Wladimir Jurowski, Conductor |
Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Composer London Philharmonic Orchestra Wladimir Jurowski, Conductor |
(Les) Illuminations |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Composer London Philharmonic Orchestra Sally Matthews, Soprano Wladimir Jurowski, Conductor |
Author: Andrew Achenbach
For the two remaining items we switch from the QEH to the RFH. In the Frank Bridge Variations, string timbre acquires a slightly hard edge and lack of ripeness that tend to point up a niggling suggestion of aggressive display about this music-making. Granted, there are many stimulating touches – and the playing per se is wonderfully secure – but some unadvisedly overlong pauses between the individual movements disrupt the flow in a conception that ultimately fails to add up to the sum of its (at times admittedly brilliant) parts. I crave the organic sweep, humanity and inevitability of Britten’s own illimitably searching 1967 Decca recording with the ECO (1/87, still the interpretative touchstone over 40 years on).
I’m even less happy with the present Les illuminations, which finds Sally Matthews falling well short of the ideal in her clarity of diction and attention to dynamic nuance (that tricky glissando sigh at the end of “Phrase” is not remotely ppp dolce as marked). On this evidence she has some way to go in finding the key to Britten’s savage parade – no match, certainly, for the towering authority and understanding demonstrated by Heather Harper on her classic 1970 account with Marriner and the Northern Sinfonia on EMI British Composers (justly lauded by AFC in his admirable “Gramophone Collection” on this endlessly fascinating masterpiece – 3/09). All told, something of a mixed bag, to say the least.
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