Britten: Billy Budd

“the musical performance is of such high quality that it is worthy of release in audio format, especially with Glyndebourne’s lavish presentation and documentation. Jacques Imbrailo’s Billy is just as effective on CD as it is on screen: he sounds more youthful and lyrical than his most illustrious predecessors” Sunday Times, 6th January 2013

“this new CD version is preferable, because it frees the performance of its unimaginative visuals while keeping the atmosphere of the stage. The focus switches to Mark Elder’s command of the score, the London Philharmonic’s bracing responses and the individual contributions of a spirited ensemble” Financial Times, 12th January 2013 ****

“Inspiring the LPO to its most accomplished playing, Elder leads with acute, detailed responsiveness to the drama... I had distinctly mixed feeling about John Mark Ainsley's Vere in the DVD of this production but, to my great surprise, I find him almost entirely persuasive on CD...Like Ainsley's Vere, Phillip Ens's Claggart makes a finer impression on disc than on DVD...The daunting challenges of recording this work 'live' are met.” International Record Review, February 2013

“the voices project clearly. We feel as if we are out on deck, yet the balance with the orchestra is very good...Imbrailo makes a marvellously youthful, innocent-sounding Billy...He is fortunate to have such a sympathetic Captain Vere in John Mark Ainsley, who makes up for a voice on the light side by his understanding for this tortured man of the enlightenment...After an uncertain start, Phillip Ens grows into a Claggart of authority” Gramophone Magazine, March 2013

“The recording sounds intimate, reflecting the claustrophobic setting. Mark Elder and the LPO's bleakly atmospheric reading isn't diminished; but it does highlight the voices to good effect...one misses Phillip Ens's grey glare as Claggart, but the disembodied voice seems even more subtly nasty in its inflections. John Mark Ainsley's Vere sounds more tonally intense...the chorus must be the liveliest on disc. For all Britten's virtues, I found this version more compelling.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2013 *****

“Ens’s Claggart is more complex, more subtly shaded than the usual pantomime villain, and John Mark Ainsley’s gracious, contemplative Captain Vere is easier on the ear than Peter Pears was...Imbrailo is a sweetly vulnerable Billy. The chorus is beyond reproach, and Sir Mark Elder’s unsparing, forensic grip on the score never slackens. Essential, in other words.” The Arts Desk, 30th March 2013

“Bostridge's voice, always smooth and luxuriant, is in its prime, with an extraordinary strength and flexibility of colour. And he's a storyteller and actor par excellence, with a massive emotional range” Evening Standard (following Barbican concert performances: 7th & 9th December 2007)

“Bostridge portrays a solemn, neurotic and painfully rueful Captain Vere…His light, effete, officer-class tenor soars above his gruffer crew. The chorus sings the rolling 'heave away' with an infectiously queasy lilt, while Harding makes the LSO swell and recede like the Atlantic Ocean.” The Times, 13th September 2008 ****

“When you can't see him, Ian Bostridge is one of the finest tenors we have…The great roles Britten wrote for Pears suit Bostridge's timbre perfectly…in this fine recording.” Anthony Holden, The Observer, 14th September 2008

“…this is a good, often exciting performance, but Hickox and especially Britten are hard acts to follow.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 ****

“…the performance carries passionate conviction. Daniel Harding conducts sensitively…but more especially with a feeling for pace and dramatic urgency. The company… work together to create… "this hateful world" (in Billy's). And the chorus… have their share of grand roughness too, sounding more plausibly sailor-like than usual.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“The great glory of Harding's performance is the playing of the orchestra, in a work in which it frequently assumes the role of a major protagonist. Harding's handling of those textures... is uncompromisingly direct, and the playing of the London Symphony Orchestra has the right blend of bite and pathos...Nathan Gunn is wonderfully touching as Billy Budd” The Guardian, 19th September 2008 ****

“Britten's score is so often praised that we tend to neglect the distinction of Forster and Crozier's libretto, sung in this set with unerring conviction by its three principals. Keenlyside and Langridge deserve special mention for their arresting sensitivity throughout the final scenes, when they make the utterances of Billy and Vere so poetic and moving: refined tone allied to eloquent phrasing – the epitome of English singing at its very best. Keenlyside has a voice of just the right weight and an appreciation of how Billy must be at once sympathetic and manly. From first to last you realise the lad's personal magnetism in vocal terms alone, explaining the crew's admiration for his qualities. Langridge is the complete Vere, suggesting the man's easy command of men, his poetic soul, his agony of mind at the awful decision placed in his hands to sacrifice Billy. At the opposite end of the human spectrum, Claggart's dark, twisted being and his depravity of thought are ideally realised by Tomlinson, give or take one or two moments of unsteadiness when his voice comes under pressure. In supporting roles there's also much to admire. Mark Padmore conveys all the Novice's terror in a very immediate, tortured manner. Clive Bayley's Dansker is full of canny wisdom. Alan Opie is a resolute Mr Redburn.
Matthew Best's is an appropriately powerful Mr Flint, though his large, gritty bass-baritone records uneasily.
Hickox conducts with all his old zest for marshalling large forces, searching out every cranny of the score, and the London Symphony forces respond with real virtuosity. Speeds now and again sound a shade too deliberate, and there's not always quite that sense of an ongoing continuum you feel in both of Britten's readings, which are by and large tauter. But the Chandos, using the revised two-act version, comes into most direct competition with Britten's later Decca set. The latter still sounds well, though inevitably it hasn't the aural range of the Chandos recording. Yet nobody will ever quite catch the creative tension the composer brings to his own work. For all that, the Chandos set benefits from this trio of imaginative singers, and most newcomers will be satisfied with its appreciable achievement.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“the finest cast of principals yet assembled...In Philip Langridge the role of Vere has found its most thoughtful interpreter yet...Comparably magnetic is John Tomlinson's Claggart, the personification of evil, chillingly malevolent in every inflexion...Keenlyside as Billy gains over all rivals in the fresh, youthful incisiveness of the voice” Penguin Guide, 2010 ***

“a definitive performance, superbly captured by producer John Culshaw. Peter Pears's Captain Vere oversees matters masterfully, but it's Peter Glossop and Michael Langdon as the pitiable Budd and odious Claggart who really drive the action.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2012

“Billy Budd is remarkable in having been composed for male voices, yet not once is there any lack of colour or variety. Britten marvellously supports the tenor, baritone and bass voices with extraordinary flair in the use of brass and woodwind.
This was the last operatic recording John Culshaw produced for Decca and he again showed himself unsurpassed at creating a theatrical atmosphere in the studio. Although there have been several striking and brilliant stage productions of this opera in recent years, not to mention Nagano's recording, it must also be said that both technically and interpretatively this Britten/Culshaw collaboration represents the touchstone for any that follows it, particularly in the matter of Britten's conducting.
Where Britten is superb is in the dramatic tautness with which he unfolds the score and his unobtrusive highlighting of such poignant detail as the use of the saxophone after the flogging.
But most of all, he focuses with total clarity on the intimate human drama against the background of life aboard the ship.
And what a cast he had, headed by Peter Pears as Vere, conveying a natural authoritarianism which makes his unwilling but dutiful role as 'the messenger of death' more understandable, if no more agreeable. Peter Glossop's Billy Budd is a virile performance, with nothing of the 'goody-goody' about him. Nor is there any particular homo-eroticism about his relationship with Michael Langdon's black-voiced Claggart: it's a straight conflict between good and evil, and all the more horrifying for its stark simplicity.
Add to these principals John Shirley-Quirk, Bryan Drake and David Kelly as the officers, Owen Brannigan as Dansker and Robert Tear and Benjamin Luxon in the small roles of the novice and his friend, and the adjective 'classic' can be applied to this recording with a clear conscience. Also on the discs are two of Britten's most sombre song cycles, the Donne Sonnets and the Blake Songs and Proverbs, the former with Pears, the latter with Fischer-Dieskau, and both incomparably accompanied by Britten. They make ideal complements to Billy Budd. This is without doubt a vintage set.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Britten himself has an outstanding cast, with Glossop a bluff, heroic Billy and Langdon a sharply dark-toned Claggart, making these symbol-figures believable. Magnificent sound, and the many richly imaginative strokes - atmospheric as well as dramatic - are superbly managed.” Penguin Guide ***