Britten's Place

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 472, 9 July 1948, Page 12

Britten's Place

F living composers I turn with most eagerness to Sibelius and Benjamin Britten. It happened on Tuesday afternoon that the Sibelius Third Symphony came from 4YA at the same time as Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings from 3YA. Of the two compositions I knew Sibelius’ better, and so I listened to Britten’s, As usual I was somewhat carried away by his in-« genious accompaniments to the voice, by the fresh tang of his writing for strings, and by his strong flow of ideas. In this Serenade he has written settings to four poems; Blake’s Elegy, Tentyson’s Nocturne, a Pastorale of Cotton’s, and an anonymous 15th Century dirge, which lies under quite a weight of Celtic twilight: This ae night, this ae night, Every night and alle, Fire and fleet and candle-light And Christ receive thy saule, The unusual flavour of Peter Pears’ tenor voice and the masterly "horn of Denis Brain blended beautifully with the Boyd Neel String Orchestra. The whole made a memorable performance, It is not hard to think of other memorable Britten compositions; his easternfacing Ceremony of Carols, his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, with its original quirks of pizzicato writing, his plaintive settings of the Seven Sonnets of Michael Angelo, and his almost unbelievable Les Illuminations, all of them fresh, original, signed with his own mark, How good is he? It seems to me he is about as good as a composer can be in the atomic age. It is surely unreasonable to expect any sensitive man to attain the spiritual serenity and confidence of Bach or the gaiety of Mozart in an age of anxiety and disintegration. :