War Requiem Spring Symphony Five Flower Songs [Import]

Britten (Artist), Hagley (Artist), Robbin (Artist), Ainsley (Artist), Pao (Artist), Gardin (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 2, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Import
• Label: Dg Imports
• ASIN: B00005V8YU
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #331,129 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well performed Britten choral works, December 11, 2007

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R. Rockwell (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: War Requiem Spring Symphony Five Flower Songs (Audio CD)

I must thank the Rough Guide for I had never heard of the Spring Symphony and they had recommended Gardiner. As the name suggests, the symphony is for soprano, alto and tenor soloitst and for two different choirs and orchestra interpretinng English poems about pastoral scenes and spring. Britten employs his usual acute sense for fitting music and words. The spring symphony sent chills down my spine it is that good. Each member of the team combine under Gardiner. Despite his reputation for Baroque reporoire Gardiner has an affinity for Britten
The hymn to st. celia for unaccompanied choir is much better known. I beieve that gardiner's is the best of the three that I own. This CD also contain five flower songs which are less exciting.
Even though I mainly bought this for the above , the forces also put on a tremendous War Requiem second only to the composer's.
Please buy. The spring symphony should be heard by all clasical lovers.
Please excuse typos, I have a neurologic disease.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Feast for Lovers of Benjamin Britten's Music, December 7, 2010

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Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: War Requiem Spring Symphony Five Flower Songs (Audio CD)

How this 2 CD recording lies rather hidden in the files of the music of Sir Benjamin Britten is puzzling. The performances of four major works as conducted by the always reliable and impressive John Eliot Gardiner all on two CDs at a very reasonable price should make every Britten lover add this to the collection.

The opening work is the magnificent and far too seldom heard 'Spring Symphony', a work that explores almost every aspect of Britten's personality in composition. It is a demanding work requiring a large orchestra (here the Philharmonia Orchestra), two choirs (the Monteverdi Choir and the Choristers of the Salisbury Cathedral) and four soloists with rather punishing lines. Gardiner finds all the poetry and grace and explosion of Spring in this recording. The soloists - Alison Hagley, Catherine Robbin, John Mark Ainsley - may not be widely known but they carry their demanding parts well, especially Catherine Robbin in the setting of Auden's poem 'Out on the lawn I lie in bed'.

Gardiner makes use of his very fine Monteverdi Choir in the unaccompanied 'Hymn to St. Cecelia' with the small but well-integrated solo voices of Emma Preston-Dunlop, Gill Ross, Penelope Vickers, Peter Mitchell and Richard Savage - a work so refined that it has become a standard in the repertoires of almost every chorus around the world. Gardiner then follows with the Five Flower Songs - lovely but not part of Britten's finest work.

The comes the big work - The War Requiem - and while other conductors may find more general sweep to the huge forces required of this mammoth work, John Eliot Gardiner somehow makes the Requiem more compact and allows the listener to take in the moments of tragic antiwar sentiment the work calls for. Here he conducts the Norddeutscher Rundfunks Sinfonieorchter and Chorus, the Monteverdi Choir, and Der Tölzer Knabenchor with soloists soprano Luba Orgonasova (who sounds very much like Galina Vishnevskaya who created the role written for her), tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson (who sadly died this year) and baritone Bo Skovhus. It is a remarkably fine achievement and one that will make this important work indelible on the psyche. In all this is a splendid album, far too overlooked. Grady Harp, December 10