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"...flaws are hard to find anywhere in the production. Philip Langridge makes the lengthy central roles a riveting experience..." "his [Alan Opie] exceptional acting skills serve him well in differentiating his seven characters. Michael Chance, who still has one of the loveliest countertenor sounds to be heard, is well cast as the voice of Apollo..." "Richard Hickox shows his expertise in the precise imagining of the nuance and dramatic point of each musical gesture, as well as a compelling overall dramatic surge right up to the breathtaking resolution on the very last note. Each detail of balance and articulation means something in this opera, and each is brilliantly realised here."

Jon Alan Conrad

 

Conductor Richard Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia last night gave an important, overwhelmingly powerful reading of Benjamin Brittens final opera… Philip Langridge… proved a subtler, more deeply involved and flexible interpreter than Peter Peers… on this evidence theres still no finer singer-actor in the world.
Although most of Britten’s major operas are established on the international circuit, ‘Death in Venice’ has yet to claim its rightful place. Hopefully this new recording in Richard Hickox’s Britten series…will help advance its cause. The performance is beautifully played and recorded, and in its all-important central role reunites Richard Hickox with Philip Langridge, so compelling in their earlier set of ‘Peter Grimes’.
The Chandos, recorded last summer [2004] in Blackheath Concert Halls, is certainly not lacking in depth. But it also has an incisive clarity matching Richard Hickox’s generally more urgent approach to expression and tempo, and the more anguished Aschenbachg of Philip Langridge… With the BBC Singers contributing many a vivid bit part and the City of London Sinfonia often outplaying the English Chamber Orchestra, this new version bids fair to become as irreplaceable as the old.
I doubt whether I shall ever hear Aschenbach sung with more telling, truthful or touching insight.
Langridge is astonishing: his voice sounds positively youthful (which Pears didn’t in 1974) and his diction is as immaculate as that of the role’s creator. He identifies movingly with the character of the ageing author whose flagging inspiration and sensory passions are, momentarily, revived by an encounter with a beautiful Polish youth. Alan Opie brings more variety to the multiple characters of Aschenbach’s nemesis that did John Shirley-Quirk in the Decca recording. This is one of Hickox’s finest achievements on disc, and the recorded sound is spectacular.
The other dramatic element in the opera is the choral dances, and that is where Hickox’s account really comes into its own: he makes more sense of the sometimes four-square choral writing and the gamelan-inspired orchestral textures than any other performance I’ve heard. Though Pear’s version preserves its special place, this is now the one to hear.
In this recording, Britten’s final opera comes across as a dark drama of the soul rather than the senses, full of inner voices, doubts and unfulfilled desires. Philip Langridge sings Aschenbach with poise and agonised humanity, while Alan Opie is extremely eloquent in the multiple baritone roles. With the City of London Sinfonia and BBC Singers, Hickox delivers a crystalline account that trumps the composer’s own.
…what astonishing sonorities Hickox drew from his 41 players; never, perhaps, before have Brittens new-found chord-spacings come over so vividly… [Aschenbach] was a role written for, even partly by Pears, with all his unique idiosyncracies, and one never imagined him being surpassed. Yet in his immaculate diction, vast range of expression and tone, and above all, in the integrity of his portrayal, Langridge surely comes close.
Here the emphasis is on tonal beauty. Beautiful singing, beautiful playing, even a slight lingering over – a slight stretching out – of particularly beautiful passages. Yet there is full measure of drama expressed though exquisite diction. Langridge is regarded as the leading interpreter of Britten’s tenor music, and here he certainly lets us hear why… The orchestra plays magnificently; they sound rich, warm, smooth as silk., Tempos are a bit slower than Britten’s, without the composer’s drive – gentler and just a shade under Britten’s fullness and emotional grandeur. Recorded sound is broad and clear.
It is superbly recorded in Chandos’s most dazzlingly ‘present’ and realistic sound and quite wonderfully conducted by Hickox, the most convinced and convincing of the second-generation Britten conductors, who gets world-class playing from the City of London Sinfonia (and especially its virtuoso wind and tuned-percussion soloists)…. A triumph for Langridge, Opie, Hickox and Chandos, without a doubt, and one of the truly memorable records of the year, I think.


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