Sarah Francis, Michael Dussek, Delmé Quartet - Britten: Music for Oboe; Piano Music (1995)
BAND/ARTIST: Sarah Francis, Michael Dussek, Delmé Quartet
- Title: Britten: Music for Oboe; Piano Music
- Year Of Release: 1995
- Label: Hyperion
- Genre: Classical
- Quality: flac lossless (tracks) +Booklet
- Total Time: 01:14:46
- Total Size: 243 mb
- WebSite: Album Preview
Tracklist
01. Britten: Phantasy, Oboe Quartet, Op. 2
02. Britten: Holiday Diary, Op. 5: I. Early Morning Bath
03. Britten: Holiday Diary, Op. 5: II. Sailing
04. Britten: Holiday Diary, Op. 5: III. Fun-Fair
05. Britten: Holiday Diary, Op. 5: IV. Night
06. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: I. Pan, Who Played upon the Reed Pipe Which Was Syrinx, His Beloved
07. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: II. Phaeton, Who Made upon the Chariot of the Sun for One Day and Was Hurled into the River Padus by a Thunderbolt
08. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: III. Niobe, Who, Lamenting the Death of Her 14 Children, Was Turned into a Mountain
09. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: IV. Bacchus, at Whose Feast Is Heard the Noise of Gaggling Women's Tattling Tongues and Shouting Out of Boys
10. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: V. Narcissus, Who Fell in Love with His Own Image and Became a Flower
11. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: VI. Arethusa, Who, Flying from the Love of Alpheus the River God, Was Turned into a Fountain
12. Britten: Temporal Variations: I. Theme. Andante rubato
13. Britten: Temporal Variations: II. Oration. Lento quasi recitativo
14. Britten: Temporal Variations: III. March. Alla marcia
15. Britten: Temporal Variations: IV. Exercises. Allegro molto e fuoco
16. Britten: Temporal Variations: V. Commination. Adagio con fuoco
17. Britten: Temporal Variations: VI. Chorale. Molto lento
18. Britten: Temporal Variations: VII. Waltz. Allegretto rubato
19. Britten: Temporal Variations: VIII. Polka. Tempo di Polka – Allegro
20. Britten: Temporal Variations: IX. Resolution. Maestoso, ma non troppo lento
21. Britten: 5 Waltzes: I. Rather Fast and Nervous
22. Britten: 5 Waltzes: II. Quick, with Wit
23. Britten: 5 Waltzes: III. Dramatic
24. Britten: 5 Waltzes: IV. Rhythmic, Not Fast
25. Britten: 5 Waltzes: V. Variations. Quiet and Simple; Flowing; Slow and Sad
26. Britten: 2 Insect Pieces: I. The Grasshopper
27. Britten: 2 Insect Pieces: II. The Wasp
28. Britten: Night Piece "Notturno"
The time-span of the small but not insignificant body of chamber music which Britten wrote for solo oboe extends from the days of his first London successes as a student composer at the Royal College of Music in the early thirties to the year 1951 when—though still not without his detractors—he had become recognized by the public as a genius of the first rank. This was a momentous period in his development. After work as a composer for the GPO Film Unit and the so-called Group and Left Theatres in London he left in 1939 for America, only to find himself irresistibly drawn back to England and his Suffolk roots in 1942, with Peter Grimes stirring in his creative imagination. The great success of Peter Grimes in 1945 established its thirty-one-year-old composer as a new voice in English music and the white hope of English opera. There followed in rapid succession the tragedy The Rape of Lucretia and the comedy Albert Herring, and Billy Budd was now almost ready for its premiere at the Royal Opera House in December.
Opera apart, Britten had also committed himself to the other genre that was to prove central in his creative life through his association with the singer Peter Pears: the beautiful Serenade for tenor, horn and strings and the passionate Holy Sonnets of John Donne were the latest in a line of song-cycles that had begun in 1936 with the disturbingly brilliant Auden collaboration, Our Hunting Fathers.
The first of the oboe pieces from these years is—despite its youthfulness of expression—perhaps the most important: the consummately crafted Phantasy Quartet for oboe and string trio which dates from 1932 and followed hard on the heels of Opus 1, the Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra. The Quartet was dedicated to and first performed by Leon Goossens in August (the BBC broadcast premiere) and November 1933 (London concert premiere). It scored Britten’s first international success the following April when it was performed at the International Society of Contemporary Music in Florence. As in Mozart’s Oboe Quartet it is the oboe which dominates the ensemble as first among equals. The Phantasy is constructed in arch form and—remarkably for its time in pre-war England—its intricate structure suggests that the brilliant young composer in his final year at music college had already absorbed the idea of sonata-cycle compression contained in Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony. Stealthily emerging from and returning to the silence in which it began, the work is framed by a march introduction and postlude. In this introduction the solo oboe enters for the first time molto pianissimo with the main theme which (while continuing to play its part in the scheme of things) proves the source of the ‘new’ contrasted themes of a terse sonata-allegro. At the climax of the development section the pace (but not, for several more bars, the developmental intensity) slackens. Unexpectedly, a slow pastoral section now intervenes, with a lengthy elaboration of a new theme for strings alone before the oboe rejoins its companions to lead the music back to the recapitulation of the sonata-allegro and the march postlude. If the pastoral slow section echoes the leisurely folkiness of an Englishry that Britten had not yet entirely rejected, the Phantasy as a whole generates a tension and harmonic grittiness which are harbingers of a less complacent outlook.
Britten had already written his deft Two Insect Pieces for oboe and piano in 1935 when in the following year he returned to the medium with something more substantial. The next work to be completed after Our Hunting Fathers, the Temporal Variations are based on a lean and hungry funeral march ‘theme’ that seems unable to escape from its semitonal point of departure. The theme is as much a kind of wordless recitative as anything resembling a melody as such, and Britten exploits this loose shape in a number of free variations which ennoble or parody it according to the chosen character. In its mixture of menace and gay abandon, beauty and the grotesque, seriousness and slapstick humour we may glimpse something of the appeal which Shostakovich was to make to Britten when he encountered that composer’s music for the first time in his opera Lady Macbeth in London the following year. And if Britten steals unashamedly from Mahler, Bartók, Ravel and Schoenberg in these Variations of 1935 it is interesting that the March (III) was to provide the source for a striking bit of self-borrowing when he came to write the Marcia fourth movement of his Sonata for cello and piano in 1961. It is fascinating also to catch a glimpse in Oration (II) of the gleaming fanfare imagery of ‘Let the florid music praise’ in the forthcoming Auden cycle, On this Island, a type of imagery more thoroughly to be exploited in the cyclic process of Les Illuminations.
A gap of fifteen years separates the somewhat experimental exuberance of Temporal Variations from the assured mastery of the Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, written for performance by Joy Boughton on the Meare at Thorpeness on 14 June 1951 during the Fourth Aldeburgh Festival. Like pieces of statuary in some classically conceived garden, these perfect miniatures catch the spirit of ancient Greece with playfulness, humour, compassion and tenderness. The sly languor of Pan, the ill-advised daring of Phaeton, the sad immobility of Niobe, the tipsy revelries of Bacchus and his troop of boys, Narcissus contemplating his own image, the tumbling fountain of Arethusa—all are caught in a perfectly conceived outdoor music that must have yielded pure enchantment at its first performance over the waters on that June afternoon...
01. Britten: Phantasy, Oboe Quartet, Op. 2
02. Britten: Holiday Diary, Op. 5: I. Early Morning Bath
03. Britten: Holiday Diary, Op. 5: II. Sailing
04. Britten: Holiday Diary, Op. 5: III. Fun-Fair
05. Britten: Holiday Diary, Op. 5: IV. Night
06. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: I. Pan, Who Played upon the Reed Pipe Which Was Syrinx, His Beloved
07. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: II. Phaeton, Who Made upon the Chariot of the Sun for One Day and Was Hurled into the River Padus by a Thunderbolt
08. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: III. Niobe, Who, Lamenting the Death of Her 14 Children, Was Turned into a Mountain
09. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: IV. Bacchus, at Whose Feast Is Heard the Noise of Gaggling Women's Tattling Tongues and Shouting Out of Boys
10. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: V. Narcissus, Who Fell in Love with His Own Image and Became a Flower
11. Britten: 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid, Op. 49: VI. Arethusa, Who, Flying from the Love of Alpheus the River God, Was Turned into a Fountain
12. Britten: Temporal Variations: I. Theme. Andante rubato
13. Britten: Temporal Variations: II. Oration. Lento quasi recitativo
14. Britten: Temporal Variations: III. March. Alla marcia
15. Britten: Temporal Variations: IV. Exercises. Allegro molto e fuoco
16. Britten: Temporal Variations: V. Commination. Adagio con fuoco
17. Britten: Temporal Variations: VI. Chorale. Molto lento
18. Britten: Temporal Variations: VII. Waltz. Allegretto rubato
19. Britten: Temporal Variations: VIII. Polka. Tempo di Polka – Allegro
20. Britten: Temporal Variations: IX. Resolution. Maestoso, ma non troppo lento
21. Britten: 5 Waltzes: I. Rather Fast and Nervous
22. Britten: 5 Waltzes: II. Quick, with Wit
23. Britten: 5 Waltzes: III. Dramatic
24. Britten: 5 Waltzes: IV. Rhythmic, Not Fast
25. Britten: 5 Waltzes: V. Variations. Quiet and Simple; Flowing; Slow and Sad
26. Britten: 2 Insect Pieces: I. The Grasshopper
27. Britten: 2 Insect Pieces: II. The Wasp
28. Britten: Night Piece "Notturno"
The time-span of the small but not insignificant body of chamber music which Britten wrote for solo oboe extends from the days of his first London successes as a student composer at the Royal College of Music in the early thirties to the year 1951 when—though still not without his detractors—he had become recognized by the public as a genius of the first rank. This was a momentous period in his development. After work as a composer for the GPO Film Unit and the so-called Group and Left Theatres in London he left in 1939 for America, only to find himself irresistibly drawn back to England and his Suffolk roots in 1942, with Peter Grimes stirring in his creative imagination. The great success of Peter Grimes in 1945 established its thirty-one-year-old composer as a new voice in English music and the white hope of English opera. There followed in rapid succession the tragedy The Rape of Lucretia and the comedy Albert Herring, and Billy Budd was now almost ready for its premiere at the Royal Opera House in December.
Opera apart, Britten had also committed himself to the other genre that was to prove central in his creative life through his association with the singer Peter Pears: the beautiful Serenade for tenor, horn and strings and the passionate Holy Sonnets of John Donne were the latest in a line of song-cycles that had begun in 1936 with the disturbingly brilliant Auden collaboration, Our Hunting Fathers.
The first of the oboe pieces from these years is—despite its youthfulness of expression—perhaps the most important: the consummately crafted Phantasy Quartet for oboe and string trio which dates from 1932 and followed hard on the heels of Opus 1, the Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra. The Quartet was dedicated to and first performed by Leon Goossens in August (the BBC broadcast premiere) and November 1933 (London concert premiere). It scored Britten’s first international success the following April when it was performed at the International Society of Contemporary Music in Florence. As in Mozart’s Oboe Quartet it is the oboe which dominates the ensemble as first among equals. The Phantasy is constructed in arch form and—remarkably for its time in pre-war England—its intricate structure suggests that the brilliant young composer in his final year at music college had already absorbed the idea of sonata-cycle compression contained in Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony. Stealthily emerging from and returning to the silence in which it began, the work is framed by a march introduction and postlude. In this introduction the solo oboe enters for the first time molto pianissimo with the main theme which (while continuing to play its part in the scheme of things) proves the source of the ‘new’ contrasted themes of a terse sonata-allegro. At the climax of the development section the pace (but not, for several more bars, the developmental intensity) slackens. Unexpectedly, a slow pastoral section now intervenes, with a lengthy elaboration of a new theme for strings alone before the oboe rejoins its companions to lead the music back to the recapitulation of the sonata-allegro and the march postlude. If the pastoral slow section echoes the leisurely folkiness of an Englishry that Britten had not yet entirely rejected, the Phantasy as a whole generates a tension and harmonic grittiness which are harbingers of a less complacent outlook.
Britten had already written his deft Two Insect Pieces for oboe and piano in 1935 when in the following year he returned to the medium with something more substantial. The next work to be completed after Our Hunting Fathers, the Temporal Variations are based on a lean and hungry funeral march ‘theme’ that seems unable to escape from its semitonal point of departure. The theme is as much a kind of wordless recitative as anything resembling a melody as such, and Britten exploits this loose shape in a number of free variations which ennoble or parody it according to the chosen character. In its mixture of menace and gay abandon, beauty and the grotesque, seriousness and slapstick humour we may glimpse something of the appeal which Shostakovich was to make to Britten when he encountered that composer’s music for the first time in his opera Lady Macbeth in London the following year. And if Britten steals unashamedly from Mahler, Bartók, Ravel and Schoenberg in these Variations of 1935 it is interesting that the March (III) was to provide the source for a striking bit of self-borrowing when he came to write the Marcia fourth movement of his Sonata for cello and piano in 1961. It is fascinating also to catch a glimpse in Oration (II) of the gleaming fanfare imagery of ‘Let the florid music praise’ in the forthcoming Auden cycle, On this Island, a type of imagery more thoroughly to be exploited in the cyclic process of Les Illuminations.
A gap of fifteen years separates the somewhat experimental exuberance of Temporal Variations from the assured mastery of the Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, written for performance by Joy Boughton on the Meare at Thorpeness on 14 June 1951 during the Fourth Aldeburgh Festival. Like pieces of statuary in some classically conceived garden, these perfect miniatures catch the spirit of ancient Greece with playfulness, humour, compassion and tenderness. The sly languor of Pan, the ill-advised daring of Phaeton, the sad immobility of Niobe, the tipsy revelries of Bacchus and his troop of boys, Narcissus contemplating his own image, the tumbling fountain of Arethusa—all are caught in a perfectly conceived outdoor music that must have yielded pure enchantment at its first performance over the waters on that June afternoon...
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