Britten: String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 25

Benjamin Britten (1913-76) was one of the most precocious of all composers who have the term child prodigy attached to them. Britten showed a keen interest in music from a very early age – both as a pianist and composer. He would become a formidable pianist, but as remarkable as his early compositions are (he had composed 6 string quartets by the age of 12!), very few people, including Frank Bridge could predict that he would become the 20th centuries greatest opera composers. In this 2CD set the early Simple Symphony is heard in the composer’s arrangement for quartet. It is based on early works, including his 9th piano sonata of 1926, and the 3rd suite for piano of 1925 – both composed when Britten was just 12 years old.

Britten composed three mature quartets spanning his creative life, and one unnumbered work dating from 1931. Britten returned to this student work in 1971 whist recovering from a heart operation, and revised it for performance at the 1975 Aldeburgh Festival. The 1st quartet dates from 1941, the 2nd from 1945 and was premiered on the actual day that Purcell died some 250 years earlier, and was Britten’s second contribution to the Purcell Anniversary, after The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. It’s a powerful work reflecting the composer’s shock at seeing first hand the concentration camps after the fall of the Nazis. Britten toured Germany with Yehudi Menuhin and what he saw left a lasting impression on him. The 3rd quartet is from 1975/6, and was premiered two weeks after his death – the quartet uses fragments of his last opera Death in Venice in the last movement.

‘brilliantly incisive and excellently balanced. In particular, the great first movement sounds much more radical than usual, simply because the players pay scrupulous attention to Britten's expression marks and relish the remarkable contrasts of tempo and texture.’ Gramophone, reviewing the 1st quartet , May 1991

‘…..undeniably compelling readings.’ Gramophone, on the 2nd and 3rd quartets, December 1990

This 3 disc set features performances by the Dutch quartet, the Doelen Quartet. Their repertoire is possibly one of the most diverse of any string quartet. It is not unusual for them to play music by Rihm along side a piece by Beethoven.

This release clearly shows why the quartet is regarded as one of the most outstanding quartets around today.

3 CD's for price of 2

Britten had a great affinity with chamber music from an early age; it provided him with the perfect medium for experimenting with and assimilating a wide variety of musical styles and techniques. Featuring a selection of quartets, suites and sonatas, as well as some of the many works that Britten wrote for distinguished soloists of his time, this set is a fitting tribute to one of the 20th century’s most accomplished chamber music composers.This box is part of EMI's series of releases celebrating the Benjamin Britten centenary.

Benjamin Britten was born on the day of the Patron Saint of Music – St. Cecilia – 22nd November in 1913 in Lowestoft. He showed remarkable skill at composition from his earliest days. In 1924 he met Frank Bridge (1879-1941), a fine composer in his own right, and became his pupil; through him he developed an appreciation of contemporary music with scores by Bartók and the Schönberg school, particulary Berg.

In 1930 he entered the Royal College of Music and developed the pianistic skills which made him such a brilliant interpreter of both his own music and other greats particularly Mozart and Schubert. From these times date the beautiful A Hymn to the Virgin, Quatre Chansons Françaises and the Sinfonietta, his official Op. 1. He visited Vienna in 1934 and saw Wozzeck but family resistance prevented him studying with Berg (who, in any case, died from blood poisoning caused by an insect sting a year later).

He worked for some years in the film unit of the General Post Office where he met W.H. Auden whose poetry inspired the brilliant song cycle Our Hunting Fathers. The experience in the film unit enabled him to develop the expressive immediacy and technical abilities – often using small and unconventional resources – which would assist his composition of operas in the years to come.

In 1939 he decided to follow Auden to America, accompanying him was the tenor Peter Pears (1910-1986) who was to be the inspiration behind so many great operatic roles and song cycles. There he composed the Sinfonia da Requiem, the Michelangelo Sonnets and the First Quartet. His first opera, Paul Bunyan, to an Auden libretto, was also composed there but then withdrawn (it was revived for the Aldeburgh Festival in the year he died).

He started to get the pangs of homesickness especially when he read, by chance, an article by E.M. Forster on the Suffolk poet Crabbe (whose work was to lead to arguably his greatest success) and he returned to England in 1942. He wrote A Ceremony of Carols and Hymn to St. Cecilia (another Auden text) during this year.

For British Opera the date 7th June 1945 will always remain a red-letter day as it heralded the premiere of a masterpiece, Peter Grimes. The triumph not only established Britten as Purcell’s successor as Britain’s greatest music dramatist but its numerous performances abroad showed that Britain had an international composer celebrity.

The Rape of Lucretia was premiered the following year as was the work by which Britten is probably best remembered – certainly by thankful schoolchildren for their guide to the Orchestra. Here he subjects the theme by Purcell to a series of ingenious variations played by each member of the orchestra and then as groups and finally a fugue where everything comes together in a simply unforgettable coda.

Indeed when one examines Britten’s output it is hard not to credit him with at least one work of genius, if not a masterpiece, virtually every year for the rest of his composing life – whether it be an opera, for example The Turn of the Screw in 1954 or A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1960; a choral work, for example Spring Symphony in 1949 or the War Requiem in 1961, a large vocal work, for example Serenade for tenor, horn and strings in 1943, Nocturne in 1958 and Phaedra in 1975; a smaller vocal work, for example the Canticles of 1947, 1952, 1954, 1971 & 1974; the works he wrote for Mstislav Rostropovich – the Cello Sonata in 1961, the Cello Symphony in 1963 and the three Solo Cello Suites in 1964, 1967 & 1971; the two remaining string quartets in 1945 & 1975 and a full length ballet The Prince of the Pagodas in 1956.

Besides setting many classic poets from Britain including Blake, Burns, Coleridge, Donne, Hardy, Keats, Jonson, Milton, Owen, Shakespeare, Shelley, Spenser, Tennyson and Wordsworth he also set texts in French (Hugo, Rimbaud and Verlaine), Italian (Michelangelo), German (Hölderlin) and Russian (Pushkin). He was also partly responsible for the reawakening of interest in the music of his great predecessor, Henry Purcell by making realizations of a large number of his works. He also launched the music festival in his adopted town of Aldeburgh.