Sir Simon Rattle’s outstandingly perceptive and delectably stylish Britten compendium is a straightforward reissue at lower mid-price of a hugely rewarding 2-CD set from 1991 (itself a mixture of two previously released anthologies and four brand new recordings). Chronologically, the contents range far and wide, from the 14- year-old schoolboy’s miraculously assured Quatre chansons francaises of August 1928 (Britten’s lessons with Frank Bridge had started the previous October) to the extraordinarily haunting Suite on English Folk Tunes (Britten’s very last orchestral work, completed in 1974). Other rarities here include the 1939 pacifist cantata Ballad of Heroes (shortly after the premiere of which Britten and Pears sailed to North America), the busy 1967 overture The Building of the House (penned, of course, to celebrate the opening of the Snape Maltings concert hall) and Colin Matthews’ performing version of the sketches for Praise We Great Men (an unfinished setting of a poem by Dame Edith Sitwell). With the classic Katchen/Britten 1954 version of Diversions again languishing in the Decca vaults (7/89 – nla), Peter Donohoe’s dashing performance usefully complements Leon Fleischer’s rather more patrician account with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony. For my money, no one has yet matched the incendiary emotional charge of Britten’s own 1964 recording of the Sinfonia da Requiem, but Rattle’s 1984 version remains as powerful a digital contender as any.
The companion release comprises the contents of nearly three exemplary VW collections from the 1980s (the only casualty, if I’m not mistaken, being a fine Flos campi – a work that Hickox has anyway since re-recorded with violist Philip Dukes and these same Tyneside forces on Chandos, 11/95). Outstanding items include swaggeringly affectionate performances of the lovely 1929 overture to The Poisoned Kiss and that delightful 1923 ballet Old King Cole (the latter featuring a splendidly lusty contribution from the Sinfonia Chorus). Hickox also directs a most sensitive account of the glorious Five Mystical Songs (though baritone Stephen Roberts’s timbre lacks something in bloom). Bradley Creswick surpasses himself in the Violin Concerto and The Lark Ascending (irreproachably poised and sensitive realisations, both), and if Roger Winfield isn’t quite as agile or quick-witted a protagonist of the Oboe Concerto as some of his rivals, his is a supremely touching presence all the same, and Hickox’s typically warm-hearted, pliant accompaniment strikes me as quite masterly (I’ve honestly never been more moved by the work’s wistful closing measures). Even old chestnuts like the Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’ and Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’ come up as fresh as the day they were created, and there’s also an agreeable clutch of relatively unfamiliar offerings to enjoy, not least the stirring prelude to the 1941 film 49th Parallel (VW’s first effort for the big screen) and those two generously sung Hymn-Tune Preludes (listen to ‘Hyfrydol’ for a pungent example of VW’s penetrating modality). All in all, cracking value for money.'