Customer Reviews

Britten Abroad

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Since Amazon gives no clue about what this CD contains, here's the full program:

7 Sonnets of Michelangelo op.22. The Poet's Echo op.76. 4 French Folksong Arrangements for high voice : La Noel passee / Voici le Printemps / Fileuse / Le roi s'en va-t'en chasse. Um Mitternacht. Sechs Holderlin-Fragmente op.61. 4 French Folksong Arrangements for high voice : La belle est au jardin d'amour / Il est quelqu'un sur terre / Eho! Eho! / Quand j'etais chez mon pere.

None of these Britten song cycles are popular, and even though it was a clever idea to gather them under the rubric of "Britten Abroad" -- the texts are in Russian, German, Italian, and French -- I imagine only specialists will be attracted. The best music here, to my ears, is in the early set of Michelangelo sonnets, and Mark Padmore sings them with conviction and passion. The songs were written for Britten's partner, Peter Pears, but if you have problems with Pears's distinctive nasal voice, Padmore's is more conventionally beautiful. He's also fine in the four French folksongs assigned to him.

Beyond that, I wasn't too happy. Soprano Susan Gritton has a bland, mature sound that she doesn't vary, and her interpretive ideas are limited. Frankly, getting through her two major works, the "Poet's Echo" written for Galina Vishnevskaya, and the "Six Holderlin Fragments," both composed in Britten's late, unmelodic dry tonality, took an effort. In the end, if you can download the Michelangelo sonnets from Napster or Rhapsody, as I did, you will be getting the cream of the crop (sorry, Amazon).