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The third volume of the annotated selected letters of composer
Benjamin Britten covers the years 1946-51, during which he wrote
many of his best-known works, founded and developed the English
Opera Group and the Aldeburgh Festival, and toured widely in Europe
and the United States as a pianist and conductor. Correspondents
include librettists Ronald Duncan (The Rape of Lucretia), Eric
Crozier (Albert Herring, Saint Nicolas, The Little Sweep) and E. M.
Forster (Billy Budd); conductor Ernest Ansermet and composer Lennox
Berkeley; publishers Ralph Hawkes and Erwin Stein of Boosey &
Hawkes; and the celebrated tenor Peter Pears, Britten's partner.
Among friends in the United States are Christopher Isherwood,
Elizabeth Mayer and Aaron Copland, and there is a significant
meeting with Igor Stravinsky. This often startling and innovative
period is vividly evoked by the comprehensive and scholarly
annotations, which offer a wide range of detailed information
fascinating for both the Britten specialist and the general reader.
Donald Mitchell contributes a challenging introduction exploring
the interaction of life and work in Britten's creativity, and an
essay examining for the first time, through their correspondence,
the complex relationship between the composer and the writer Edward
Sackville-West.
Volume One of these remarkable letters and diaries opens with a
letter from Britten aged nine to his formidable mother, Edith.
Music is already at the centre of his life, and it accompanies him
through prep and public school and then to London to the Royal
College of Music, where the phenomenally gifted but inexperienced
young composer is plunged into metropolitan life and makes
influential new friends, among them W. H. Auden and Christopher
Isherwood. This was a time of prodigious musical creativity, a
growing awareness of his sexuality, and the dawning of his
political convictions. Most importantly, during this period Britten
met Peter Pears and established the musical and personal
relationship that was to last a lifetime. Volume One comes to a
close in May 1939, when Britten, accompanied by Pears, departs for
North America. The letters and diaries in this illuminating first
volume and its successor are supplemented by the editors' detailed
commentary and by exhaustive contemporary documentation. Together
they constitute a comprehensive portrait not only of the composer
but of an age.
This second of two volumes of the letters and diaries of Benjamin
Britten is supplemented by the editors' detailed commentary and
extensive contemporary documentation. The aim is to present a
portrait not only of the composer but of an age.
The A Z of String Players surveys the lives, careers and recordings
of over 300 string players from the past and present. Many great
string players who have made recordings are included, from Accardo
to Zukerman. The text covers artists from the earliest recording
processes to contemporary, cutting-edge technology. In this clear
and straight-forward publication, the artists are listed
alphabetically, with a summary of their career, notable recordings,
biography and critical appraisal of their recorded legacy. In
addition, four compact discs present a selection of recordings from
69 artists. This package will appeal to enthusiast and scholar
alike as a readable, informed and fascinating work of reference.
This definitive encyclopaedic work explores the origins of
percussion through the development of the early drums and
xylophones right up to the wide range of modern instruments and the
sounds they make. James Blades covers these early developments
globally from China and the Far East, India and Tibet, the early
civilisations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and Persia
through to mediaeval and renaissance Europe. He continues to
examine the role of percussion in the classical and romantic
orchestras and finally looks at the ways composers have pushed the
boundaries in modern music. Each chapter has its own photographs,
illustrations and bibliography and there are comprehensive indices
referencing all the composers and works discussed. This extended
edition includes two important new chapters. The first covers the
rise of the solo percussionist and is written by the world's
leading practitioner and one of Blades' former pupils, Dame Evelyn
Glennie, who also contributes a new Foreword, while recent
developments in orchestral percussion are covered by Neil Percy,
Head of Timpani and Percussion at the Royal Academy of Music and
Principal Percussionist of the London Symphony Orchestra.
This is a double volume dedicated to two masterpieces by Benjamin
Britten. While Peter Grimes established Britten as a composer of
international standing, Gloriana, composed for the coronation of
Elizabeth II, has never enjoyed a comparable fame. The variety of
mood, characterization and pace, in each, illustrates Britten's
exceptional gift for theatre. Commentaries on the scores reveal,
for instance, how much the popular concert extracts gain from their
context in the dramas. The essay by E.M. Forster - the inspiration
for Peter Grimes - is reprinted here, and Michael Holroyd discusses
Lytton Strachey's controversial Elizabeth and Essex - the source
for Gloriana. Contents: Benjamin Britten's Librettos, Peter Porter;
George Crabbe: The Poet and the Man, E.M. Forster; 'Peter Grimes':
A Musical Commentary, Stephen Walsh; Peter Grimes: Libretto by
Montagu Slater; 'Peter Grimes' and 'Gloriana', Joan Cross, Peter
Pears and John Evans; Some Reflections on the Operas of Benjamin
Britten, Buxton Orr; 'A daring experiment', Michael Holroyd; The
Librettist of 'Gloriana', Rupert Hart-Davis; The Music of
'Gloriana', Christopher Palmer; Notes on the Libretto of
'Gloriana', William Plomer; Gloriana: Libretto by William Plomer
Edward Gardner conducts the English National Opera Orchestra and
Chorus in this production of Benjamin Britten's final opera based
on the novella by Thomas Mann. John Graham-Hall plays Gustav von
Aschenbach, an ageing novelist who becomes obsessed with Polish boy
Tadzio (Sam Zaldivar). The performance was recorded at The London
Coliseum in June 2013.
Director Tony Britten's drama documentary examines the acclaimed
composer's lifelong commitment to pacifism. Using a dramatic
narrative to explore the development of Britten's pacifist beliefs
during the time he spent at the liberally progressive Gresham's
School in Norfolk between the years of 1928-1930, the film charts a
time which marked a crucial period of the composer's personal and
musical development. Interwoven throughout are contemporary
performances of the composer's works and contributions from,
amongst others, conductor and composer Joseph Horovitz, cellists
Anita Lasker Wallfisch and Raphael Wallfisch, and Britten's agent
for many years, Sue Phipps. John Hurt narrates.
Andris Nelsons leads the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in
this 50th anniversary performance of Benjamin Britten's War
Requiem. The piece was commissioned to mark the consecration of the
new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original
fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II
bombing raid in 1940. 50 years after its premiere it returns to the
cathedral to be performed, as it was on its first airing, by the
the City of Birmingham Orchegstra, Chorus, and Youth Chorus. The
featured vocalists are Erin Wall, Mark Padmore and Hanno
Müller-Brachmann.
A collection of films made by Tony Palmer for the long-running ITV
culture series The South Bank Show, released to coincide with the
programme's demise in 2009 after a lifespan of over 30 years. Films
included are: 'Maria Callas: Callas', 'William Walton: At the
Haunted End of the Day', 'Margot Fonteyn: Margot', 'Stravinsky:
Once at a Border', 'Benjamin Britten: A Time There Was.', 'John
Adams: Hail Bop! - A Portrait of John Adams', 'Renee Fleming: Miss
Renee Fleming', 'Malcolm Arnold: Toward the Unknown Region',
'Henryk Gorecki: The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs', 'Berlioz: I,
Berlioz' and 'Michael Crawford: The Fantastic World of Michael
Crawford'.
Benjamin Britten's opera, composed to celebrate the Coronation of
Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He took as his starting point Lytton
Strachey's 'Elizabeth and Essex'. Sarah Walker and Anthony Rolfe
Johnson star.
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