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ON 4071
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ON 4071

Britten: Songs, Volume I

Released Date:
01 Jan 2012

Originally recorded in 2010
Artists:

Philip Smith

baritone

Caryl Hughes

mezzo-soprano

Malcolm Martineau

piano

Katherine Broderick

soprano

Andrew Tortise

tenor

Ben Johnson

tenor

Nicky Spence

tenor

Robin Tritschler

tenor

James Geer

tenor

Venue:

Britten Studio, Hoffmann Building, Snape Maltings, Suffolk



Producer:

Mark Brown


Dan Whitfield

(Executive for Aldeburgh Music)

Matthew Cosgrove

(Executive for Onyx)

Engineer:

Julian Millard



Record Label
Onyx

Genre:

Vocal & Song


Piano

Total Time - 131:01
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BENJAMIN BRITTEN

(1913-1976)
   
 

from 'Fish in the unruffled lakes'

 5:03  
1 To lie flat on the back 2:27
2 Night covers up the rigid land 2:35
 James Geer tenor
3 

A Dirge

 1:14
 James Geer tenor
4 

Virtue in Deeds not Words

 1:11
 Caryl Hughes mezzo-soprano
5 

Prithee

 1:52
 Andrew Tortise tenor
6 

Lucy

 1:25
 Ben Johnson tenor
7 

Canticle I

 7:46
 Andrew Tortise tenor
8 

Um Mitternacht

 4:07
 James Geer tenor
 

Sechs Holderlin-Fragmente

 12:26  
9 Menschenbeifall 1:22
10 Die Heimat 2:19
11 Sokrates und Alcibiades 2:09
12 Die Jugend 1:59
13 Häalfte des Lebens 2:06
14 Die Linie des Lebens 2:29
 James Geer tenor
 

The Holy Sonnets of John Donne

 24:28  
15 Oh my blacke soule! 3:43
16 Batter my heart 1:17
17 O might those sighes and teares 3:38
18 Oh, to vex me 1:07
19 What if this present 3:08
20 Since she whom I loved 3:08
21 At the round earth's imagined corners 2:46
22 Thou hast made me 1:23
23 Death, be not proud 4:04
 Ben Johnson tenor
 

Cabaret songs

 15:31  
24 Calypso 2:13
25 Tell me the truth about love 5:23
26 Johnny 5:01
27 Funeral blues 2:51
 Caryl Hughes mezzo-soprano
 

Tit for Tat

 5:03  
28 A song of enchantment 2:39
29 Autumn 1:33
30 Silver 1:54
31 Vigil 2:24
32 Tit for tat 1:58
 Philip Smith baritone
 

Beware!

 3:48  
33 Beware! 1:07
 Ben Johnson tenor
34 O that I had ne'er been married 1:26
 Nicky Spence tenor
35 Epitaph: The Clerk 1:13
 Ben Johnson tenor
36 

Lilian

 3:00
 Ben Johnson tenor
37 

The Joy of Grief

 1:08
 Katherine Broderick soprano
 

The Poet's Echo

 12:22  
38 Echo 2:54
39 My heart 1:49
40 Angel 2:36
41 The nightingale and the rose 4:11
42 Epigram 0:49
43 Lines written during a sleepless night 4:10
 Katherine Broderick soprano
 

Winter Words

 25:44  
44 At Day-close in November 1:52
45 Mignight on the Great Western 4:49
46 Wagtail and Baby 2:03
47 The Little Old Table 1:18
48 The Choirmaster's Burial 4:09
49 Proud Songsters 1:07
50 At the Railway Station 3:09
51 Before Life and After 3:00
 Robin Tritschler tenor
   
 Malcolm Martineau piano
  14-17 January and 30-31 October 2010  


The earliest songs date from 1922, when Britten was just nine years old – ‘Beware!’ and two other songs were from this period were reassessed by the composer in 1968, but not published until 1985. These rarities display little of the mature composer’s style, but they are confident and charming settings. The touching ‘Lilian’ and ‘The Joy of Grief’ are also early songs and receive their premiere recordings here. Mature Britten is represented by the Holy Sonnets of John Donne,Winter Words and the 1965 cycle The Poet’s Echo.

This survey of all Britten’s songs for voice and piano is a major project, and Malcolm Martineau has assembled some of the finest young singers of our time for this fascinating journey through repertoire that spans the period 1922–1971.

Britten was a prolific composer of songs throughout his creative life, producing over 100 settings for voice and piano, in addition to the works for voice and orchestra. His songs for voice and piano – of which this is the first in a two-volume 4 album cycle, contain settings by poets as diverse as Michelangelo, Hölderlin, Hardy, Pushkin, Auden and Soutar.

   ****

Roberto Brusotti - Musica magazine - March 2012


"This splendid two-disc covers four of Britten’s  greatest cycles plus the Cabaret Songs and some early unpublished items. They are brilliantly performed by eight young singers. Katherine Broderick’s ’The Poet’s Echo’ is especially fine, her timbre appropriate to music composed for Vishnevskaya. The baritone Phillip Smith shows outstanding talent in the De La Mare settings, and Robin Tritschler goes to the heart of ’Winter Words’. Malcolm Martineau has a Britten-like authority at the piano..." ****

Michael Kennedy - The Sunday Telegraph - 29 May 2011


"Martineau paces his survey of Britten’s songbook with the same lightly worn expertise he brings to his accompaniments, alternating lighter and darker material in a way that maintains the listener’s interest.....Robin Tritschler’s radiantly lyrical performance of the Thomas Hardy cycle ’Winter Words’." ***

Financial Times - 28 May 2011


"...Who would have thought the young boy would have set Tennyson’s ’Tis better to have loved and lost’ as a hypnotic little waltz, let alone Burns’s ’O that I had ne’er been married’? The John Donne sonnets and The Poet’s Echo (Katherine Broderick) are very fine, but the most compelling track is Canticle I, a masterpiece delivered by Andrew Tortise."

Nicholas Kenyon - The Observer- 12 June 2011


"For this first volume of Britten’s collected songs, Martineau has gathered a gratifyingly formidable array of young British singing talent. Ben Johnson is commanding in an urgent passionate reading of The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Andrew Tortise conveys rapturously intense emotions in Canticle 1, ’My Beloved is Mine’, as personal an expression of the composer’s love for Peter Pears as anything he wrote. Perhaps the best is left until last, when Robin Tritschler gives a fresh-sounding ’Winter Words’" ****

Stephen Pettitt - The Sunday Times - 29 May 2011


"Masterful....an excellent set"

BBC Radio3 CD Review - 2 July 2011


’..this series promises to be a major addition to the Britten discography’.

Gramophone magazine -  September 2011




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