Britten - Songs - Hyperion: CDA66823 - CD or download

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Bostridge is in the royal line of Britten's tenor interpreters. Indeed his imaginative response to words and music may come closer than any to Pears himself. He's heard here in a veritable cornucopia... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

Catalogue No: CDA66823
Label: Hyperion
Length: 65 minutes

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Britten: Lord! I have sinned

Work length2:56

$1.00

$1.25

Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: Hymn to God the Father

Work length2:32

$1.00

$1.25

Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: A Hymn on Divine Musick

Work length5:29

$1.00

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: This way to the tomb

Work length4:37

$3.00

$3.75

Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

I. Evening

Track length1:43

$1.00

$1.25

II. Morning

Track length1:08

$1.00

$1.25

III. Night

Track length1:46

$1.00

$1.25

Britten: Night covers up the rigid land (No. 2 from Fish in the Unruffled Lakes)

Work length2:37

$1.00

$1.25

Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: Fish in the Unruffled Lakes - Six Auden settings

Work length2:51

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: To lie flat on the back with the knees flexed (No. 1 from Fish in the Unruffled Lakes)

Work length2:27

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: A Poison Tree

Work length2:57

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: When you're feeling like expressing your affection (Auden)

Work length0:44

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: Not even summer yet (Burra)

Work length1:46

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: The Red Cockatoo (Waley)

Work length0:41

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: Wild with passion (Beddoes)

Work length2:26

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: If Thou Wilt Ease Thine Heart

Work length1:52

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: Cradle Song for Eleanor (MacNeice)

Work length3:04

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: Birthday Song for Erwin (Duncan)

Work length1:25

$1.00

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: Um Mitternacht

Work length3:41

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Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Britten: The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Op. 35

Work length23:13

$9.00

$11.25

Ian Bostridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

I. Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned

Track length3:13

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II. Batter my heart three person'd God; for, you

Track length1:16

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III. O might those sighes and teares returne againe into my breast and eyes

Track length3:08

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IV. Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one

Track length1:05

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V. What if this present were the world's last night?

Track length2:56

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VI. Since she whom I love hath payd her last debt

Track length3:28

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VII. At the round earth's imagined corners, blew

Track length2:42

$1.00

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VIII. Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?

Track length1:25

$1.00

$1.25

IX. Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Track length4:00

$1.00

$1.25

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Fourteen of the songs on this major release are recorded for the first time. The inspiration for the Holy Sonnets was a harrowing trip paid by Britten and Yehudi Menuhin to Belsen at the end of the war, while the songs from the collection The Red Cockatoo and other songs respond to a wide variety of more homely influences.

Reviews

2010

Bostridge is in the royal line of Britten's tenor interpreters. Indeed his imaginative response to words and music may come closer than any to Pears himself. He's heard here in a veritable cornucopia of mostly unfamiliar and unknown songs (the Donne cycle apart), mainly from the earliest period of Britten's song-writing career when his inspiration was perhaps at its most free and spontaneous. The three settings from Ronald Duncan's This way to the Tomb nicely match that poet's florid, vocabulary-rich style as Britten was to do again two years later in Lucretia, with 'Night', based on a B-minor ground bass, a particularly arresting piece. The Auden settings, roughly contemporaneous with On this Island, all reflect Britten's empathy with the poet at that time. The third, To lie flat on the back, evinces Britten's gift for writing in racy mode, as does When you're feeling like expressing your affection, very much in the style of Cabaret Songs. Much deeper emotions are stirred by the two superb Beddoes settings (Wild with passion and If thouwilt ease thine heart), written when the composer and Pears were on a ship returning home in 1942. The red cockatoo itself is an early setting of Waley to whom Britten returned in Songs fromthe Chinese. All these revelatory songs are performed with full understanding and innate beauty by Bostridge and Johnson, who obviously have a close artistic rapport. The Donne Sonnets are as demanding on singer and pianist as anything Britten wrote, hence their previously small representation in the catalogue. Both artists pierce to the core of these electrifying songs, written after, and affected by, Britten's visit to Belsen with Menuhin in 1945. The recording catches the immediacy of these riveting performances. A richly satisfying issue.

Britten - Songs

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