Britten: Peter Grimes

“…impressively cast, but in an overly stylised staging which reduces village life to milling dispiritedly beneath a vast black wall.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2008 ****

“...a fine performance, powerfully conducted by Donald Runnicles. In the title role Anthony Dean Griffey matches that power...with a tenor which is confidently firm and precise, matching his fine acting as a lumbering figure...Felicity Palmer as Mrs Sedley is vividly characterful.” Penguin Guide, 2010 **/*

“If Budd is to be strongly recommended, Grimes has to be urged, passionately: intensely moving, beyond expectations even though those were high. Heather Harper sings with the most beautiful tone in the role of Ellen and acts with compelling sincerity. Pears himself is utterly vindicated... The whole complex character is there - and the camera follows closely.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2008

“Pears is a superb Grimes, every bit as compelling as in his classic Decca recording...What makes this performance so compelling is the excellence of the cast in general: from the beauty of Heather Harper's Ellen Orford, to the superb characterizations of Ann Robson's Mrs Sedley...A classic and a must for all Britten fans.” Penguin Guide, 2010 ****

“…Christopher Ventris is outstanding in the title role, and Emily Magee is a sturdy and strong Ellen Orford.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 **

“Peter's line 'Where the walls themselves gossip of inquest' – his cry of pain to Ellen after the coroner's open verdict on the loss of his first apprentice – cues the scenery and concept. The Borough, some of its citizens mounted on chairs and pillars permanently suspended above an unchanging set, is never absent from this stylised, Brechtian (and Weillian) production. Pountney's stage has no room for naturalistic clutter – no real boats, no fishing nets, no beach.
The English director's characters step out of years of 'English' ambiguity into a light of glaring every-man (and woman)-for-himself selfishness.
Balstrode listens to Grimes (Christopher Ventris, riveting) but only once (the capstan ensemble) does anything to help him; in the pub he gropes the women as much as Boles. Auntie, a red-headed Widow Begbick played with Oscar-winning charisma by Liliana Nikiteanu, and her Nieces are, quite openly, a Madame and her whores. Hobson, another terrifyingly intense portrayal, is a lazy, uncooperative psychopath, roused only by drink and the prospect of violence. Ellen is allowed more intimacy with Peter than one often sees but, as soon as she realises his obsessive work methods will never change, her 'Peter – we've failed' is final, provoking Grimes to inevitable self-destruction. In a penultimate Mad Scene of haunting, almost religious (or sacrilegious) beauty, she and Balstrode sit with a dead boy each draped across their laps, either side of the constantly see-sawing Peter on a stylised boat platform with a cross-like mast. Unforgettable.
Welser-Möst's reading of the score is hardly less innovative, reminding one with its forward, motoric winds of some great, lost Shostakovich score and, in the dance music so present in the pub scenes, of contemporaries Weill and Gershwin.
No Grimes on film is without some distinctive merit but this new EMI issue is carried by its cast, phenomenal chorus contribution, director and conductor to an important new interpretative level.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Peter's line "Where the walls themselves gossip of inquest" - his cry of pain to Ellen after the coroner's open verdict on the loss of his first apprentice - cues the scenery and concept. The Borough, some of is citizens mounted on chairs and pillars permanenly suspended above an unchanging set, is never absent from this stylised, Brechtian (and Weillian) production. Pountney's stage has no room for naturalistic clutter - no real boats, no fishing nets, no beach. Ellen is allowed more intimacy with Peter than one often sees... but, as soon as she realises his obsessive work methods will never change, her "Peter - we've failed" is final, provoking Grimes to inevitable self-destruction. In a penultimate Mad Scene of haunting, almost religious (or sacrilegious) beauty, she and Balstrode sit with a dead boy each draped across their laps, either side of the constantly see-sawing Peter on a stylised boat platform with a cross-like mast. Unforgettable. Soon-to-depart Zürich maestro Welser-Möst's reading of the score is hardly less innovative, reminding one with its forward, motoric winds of some great, lost Shostakovich score and, ...this new EMI issue is carried by its cast, phenomenal chorus contribution, director and conductor to an important new interpretative level.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2008