Benjamin: Into the Little Hill

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

The opera performance is reason enough to buy this disc, but it is equally welcome for the recording of Benjamin’s stunning recent song-cycle Dream of the Song…the settings range from Mehta’s... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2017, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 5th May 2017
Catalogue No: NI5964
Label: Nimbus
Length: 64 minutes

Presto Editor's Choice

May 2017

This item is currently out of stock at the UK distributor. You may order it now but please be aware that it may be six weeks or more before it can be despatched.

British Music - up to 25% off

Special offer ends: 08/05/2024

George Benjamin, Martin Crimp: Into the Little Hill, Pt. 1

Work length19:18

$5.50

$7.70

Hila Pitmann, Susan Bickley
London Sinfonietta
George Benjamin

I. The Crowd: Kill them they bit -kill them they steal

Track length0:51

$1.00

$1.40

II. The Minister and the Crowd - The Minister Greets the Crowd

Track length2:40

$1.00

$1.40

III. The Crowd - Kill Them They Bit, Kill Them They Steal

Track length1:34

$1.00

$1.40

IV. The Minister and the Stranger - Night Comes but Not Sleep

Track length7:59

$1.50

$2.10

V. Interlude, Mother and Child - Why Must the Rats Die Mummy?

Track length6:14

$1.00

$1.40

George Benjamin, Martin Crimp: Into the Little Hill, Pt. 2

Work length15:26

$3.00

$4.20

Hila Pitmann, Susan Bickley
London Sinfonietta
George Benjamin

VI. Inside the Minister's Head

Track length3:42

$1.00

$1.40

VII. The Minister and the Stranger, His Head Lies On His Desk - Between the Family Photograph

Track length5:20

$1.00

$1.40

VIII. Interlude, Mother(s) and Child(ren) - Each Cradle Rocks Empty

Track length6:24

$1.00

$1.40

Benjamin, G: Flight

Work length9:50

$1.50

$2.10

Michael Cox
London Sinfonietta, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
George Benjamin

George Benjamin, Peter Cole, Federico García Lorca: Dream of the Song

Work length19:35

$6.00

$8.40

Bejun Mehta, Netherlands Chamber Choir
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
George Benjamin

I. The Pen

Track length2:54

$1.00

$1.40

II. The Multiple Troubles of Man

Track length3:39

$1.00

$1.40

III. Gazing Through the Night

Track length5:02

$1.00

$1.40

IV. Gacela Del Amor Maravilloso

Track length2:24

$1.00

$1.40

V. The Gazelle

Track length2:53

$1.00

$1.40

VI. My Heart Thinks as the Sun Comes Up

Track length2:43

$1.00

$1.40

About
Reviews
Explore

About

Written in his late teens: Flight, for solo flute, whose swooping crests and curlicues are fervently relished in Michael Cox’s performance. Benjamin describes the piece as ‘inspired by the sight of birds soaring and dipping over the peaks of the Swiss Alps’. Listening to the piece you’ll hear a panoply of songs surfing the musical thermals in the alpine ether: low, long-breathed cries and calls, filigree flocks of ornamentation in the atmospheric heights of the flute’s register, a chorus of vapours conjured by a single instrument.

Into The Little Hill is based on the Pied Piper story, allowing audiences an immediate entry point into the opera’s dramaturgy. But Crimp’s re-telling simultaneously updates the story, with its politicians, photographs, and limousines, and opens up further mythic dimensions to the narrative. The drama of Into the Little Hill is concise, clear, and simultaneously ambiguous, even chilling. Benjamin says, ‘Martin’s text is hard-edged, formal, and hyper-condensed’. The reason for its musical and dramatic success is Benjamin’s unerring feeling for expressive characterisation. Each layer of Into the Little Hill’s score is immediately identifiable, from the Crowd’s baying cries of ‘Kill them’ right at the start of the piece, to the rodentine scurrying of the rat’s music, and the Mother’s lamenting grief in the last scene.

Dream of the Song is a mysteriously sensual and sensually strange song-cycle for countertenor, a halo of female voices that are similar in register, but so different in timbre and sound and expression, and orchestra. The counter-tenor sings poems, in English, by Jewish poets of 11th century Andalucia, themselves inspired by Arabic poetry of earlier centuries. There are images of ravishment and wonder here - moonlight, the celestial tent of the sky, a dream of a gazelle, a harp, a flute - but they are always undercut by other ideas. Above all, it’s the gossamer rapier of Benjamin’s music that cuts to the heart of these settings.

Reviews

July 2017

The opera performance is reason enough to buy this disc, but it is equally welcome for the recording of Benjamin’s stunning recent song-cycle Dream of the Song…the settings range from Mehta’s breathtaking stillness against quiet choral mutterings in ‘Gazing through the night’ to the searing exhortations for the choir alone of ‘Gacela del amor maravilloso’…this latest addition by Nimbus to the Benjamin discography is altogether essential listening

July 2017

a rounded and absorbing programme...Hila Plitmann and Susan Bickley evince drama and intimacy aplenty in their multiple roles and Benjamin draws a superfine response from the London Sinfonietta in fastidious scoring (basset-horns and cornets prominent) that greatly enhances the mesmeric aura.

May 2017

With its unsettling combination of Gothic claustrophobia and luminous beauty, Benjamin's first opera - a tense 30-minute two-hander, based on the story of The Pied Piper - has much in common with his recent award-winner Written on Skin; the composer conducts, revealing its uncanny beauties with superb clarity in its second outing on record.

Offer,Benjamin: Into the Little Hill

CD

Downloads

Contents

Download queue