Britten: Song Cycles

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Britten
Contents: Les Illuminations; Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings; Nocturne.
Performers: Ian Bostridge, tenor; Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle.
Anthony Tommasini wrote: "[I]f there are three greater works for voice and orchestra from the mid-20th century I don't know what they are. … [Bostridge's] performances … represent boldly reconsidered and bracingly fresh takes. … Bostridge, in his way, sings the ethereal passages in these scores with boyish lightness and shapes the phrases with cool elegance. Then, when the music heats up and turns sensual, he exudes a husky, almost adolescent virility. … Sir Simon and the Berlin players treat these works like audacious contemporary scores. … In the great Serenade, a cycle of settings of poems by Tennyson, Blake, Keats and others, the performance captures the Mahlerian mysticism of the music … and the phantasmagorical strangeness of the 'Dirge.' The horn player, Radek Baborak, conveys the feeling Britten seemingly intended: the instrument becomes a pensive, all-knowing and wordless commentator" (New York Times, 1/22/06).