Birtwistle: Punch and Judy

NMC: NMCD138

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Birtwistle: Punch and Judy

Label:

NMC

Catalogue No:

NMCD138

Discs:

2

Release date:

14th May 2007

Barcode:

5023363013826

Length:

1 hour 43 minutes

Medium:

CD (download also available)
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Birtwistle: Punch and Judy

A tragical comedy or a comical tragedy


Stephen Roberts, Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Jan DeGaetani, Philip Langridge, David Wilson- Johnson & John Tomlinson

London Sinfonietta, David Atherton

CD - 2 discs

$20.75

(also available to download from $21.25)

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Punch and Judy elaborates the traditional puppet-play into an opera of stylised violence and ritual. While the simplicity of the children’s entertainment is retained in the opera by the characters—familiar and puppet-like—by the invented ‘nursery-rhymes’ of the libretto, and by the waltzes, lullabies and serenades of the music, the tragi-comic actions of a homicidal puppet are raised almost to the status of myth as Punch murders Judy over and over again.

Harrison Birtwistle: Punch and Judy

playPrologue

playHomage to Judy

playResolve I

playPassion Chorale I

playToccata I B

playPretty Polly's Rhapsody I

playSinfonia

playWar-Cry

playToccata II B

playPretty Polly's Rhapsody II

playRoundel: 1st movement

playRecitative and Passion Aria II

playProclamation III

playNightmare

playTarot-Game: 1st Draw

playQuartet

playToccata III A

playMelodrama IV

playDeath March

playTriumph

Sunday Times

“This brilliantly sung and played account has a gripping luridness that makes it hard to imagine how the work—a 1960s expressionist masterpiece—could be done differently, never mind better. Setting a libretto of manic intellectuality by Stephen Pruslin, the opera moves with an implacable, raucous energy that is unique”

Gramophone Magazine

September 2007

“David Atherton has total empathy with the tricky blend of short numbers and culminative intensity, and draws brilliantly polished and characterful playing from the London Sinfonietta. The dream cast is headed by Stephen Roberts's stunning portrayal of Mr Punch as a demented Oxbridge choral scholar, and by David Wilson-Johnson's suave, sinister Master of Ceremonies, while Philip Langridge and John Tomlinson make telling contributions.”

Gramophone Classical Music Guide

2010

“It's almost 40 years since the 1968 premiere of Punch and Judy, celebrated in legend as a rude gesture in the face of Aldeburgh primness, and with hindsight as one of the finest achievements by Britten's most gifted British successor in the field of opera composition.
Good though it would be to have a new performance, the chances of something recent outclassing this 1979 version are remote. David Atherton has total empathy with the tricky blend of short numbers and culminative intensity, and draws brilliantly polished and characterful playing from the London Sinfonietta. The dream cast is headed by Stephen Roberts's stunning portrayal of Mr Punch as a demented Oxbridge choral scholar, and by David Wilson- Johnson's suave, sinister Master of Ceremonies, while Philip Langridge and John Tomlinson make telling contributions. This, it need hardly be said, is not 'slice of life' opera, but the characters are animated and individualised, as they should be, through music which fits Stephen Pruslin's hilariously concise word-games like a glove. And if all this weren't enough, the fabulous Phyllis Bryn-Julson comes into her own in the final stages, a succession of vivid, poignant musical moments which Birtwistle has never bettered. And given NMC's no-deletion policy, this classic set is here to stay. No collection should be without it.”

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