Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kent Nagano - Britten: Double Concerto; Two Portraits; Sinfonietta; Young Apollo (1999)

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Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kent Nagano - Britten: Double Concerto; Two Portraits; Sinfonietta; Young Apollo (1999)

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Kent Nagano and the Hallé continue to commit to CD less celebrated portions of the Britten canon. Last year there was the four-act Billy Budd; before that the premiere recording of a concert version of the radio drama The Rescue. Now come two more firsts, recordings of the Double Concerto - prepared from Britten's almost complete sketches by Colin Matthews and presented by Nagano at Aldeburgh in 1997 - and the Two Portraits from 1930. The second of these is a portrait of Britten himself, a surprisingly plaintive and reflective meditation for viola and strings in E minor. The image is belied by the rest of the music on the disc, which is buoyant, energetic, young man's music all written before Britten was 26. Big guns Kremer and Bashmet are brought in for the Double Concerto and give of their impassioned best. Nagano and the Hallé are appropriately spirited and vigorous throughout the disc. It's not mature Britten, but clearly points the way forward and is worth getting to know. More familiar orchestral works appear on Naxos's latest. The violin concerto is given a rather disappointing performance by the BBC Scottish, who are allowed to drift in the first movement and never recover a sense of forward drive and purpose. Soloist Rebecca Hirsch is rather approximate at times, and the emotional final bars of the piece are distressingly wayward. The Cello Symphony is better focused with Tim Hugh more reliable, but listeners may prefer Britten's own vision with soloists Lubotsky and Rostropovich.

Review by Christopher Wood, BBC Classical-Music.com

This CD fills an important gap in the Britten discography, containing world premiere recordings of the Two Portraits, the Double Concerto and the version for small orchestra of the Sinfonietta. The CD begins with "Young Apollo" for piano, string quartet and string orchestra (1939). A characterful seven-minute flourish, it anticipates minimalism, particularly Michael Nyman, sounding like brief phrases snatched from Schubert variously repeated rather than developed symphonically.

The Double Concerto (1932) with violin and viola soloists is more conservative in idiom, betraying some influence of Frank Bridge (Britten's teacher at he end of the 1920s). The Rhapsody is affecting whilst the Finale is an imaginatively scored Tarantella. Colin Matthews has scored the work from Britten's own sketches, claiming the result "virtually 100% Britten"

The Two Portraits of 1930 are less adventurous. The first, inspired by a schoolfriend, is a Mahlerian movement for strings with touches of Berg. The second is a lyrical self-portrait (the viola was Britten's own instrument).

The influence of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony on Britten's Sinfonietta is matched by a strong element of Englishness, as exemplified by Bridge and Ireland, in the score.

The recording (in Manchester's Bridgewater Hall) is quite reverberant and details in the instrumentation are sometimes lost. Whilst the playing of all three soloists is of the highest quality throughout the disc, the Halle strings occasionally sound thin and overstretched by the music. One has only to imagine Britten himself conducting the First Portrait (judging by the composer's own classic recordings of his Simple Symphony and Frank Bridge Variations) to realise how much more vibrant and passionate the string playing could be. Nonetheless, this disc is welcome for its enterprising repertoire and for illustrating Britten's burgeoning talent. It could turn out to be the most important recording of Kent Nagano's tenure as Music Director of the Halle Orchestra.

Review by Paul Conway, MusicWeb-International.com

An unusually absorbing Britten release, containing no less than three world-premiere recordings. The most striking discovery here has to be the Double Concerto, the short score of which the gifted 18-year-old RCM student had completed by the early autumn of 1932. That same summer, however, he also produced his ‘official’ Op. 1, the dazzlingly inventive Sinfonietta for ten instruments. Fascinatingly, the two works have plenty in common both formally and stylistically: at the outset of the central Andante lento of the Sinfonietta, for example, note the unashamedly soloistic nature of the two violins’ expressive dialogue.

The ‘orchestral’ version of the Sinfonietta heard here dates from 1936 and incorporates markings for a full complement of strings as well as a second horn part. In the case of the Double Concerto, it was left to Colin Matthews to fashion a performing edition from Britten’s helpfully detailed sketches, and the piece received its belated premiere at the 1987 Aldeburgh Festival. Though it may not quite display the effortless fluency and innovative thematic guile of the Sinfonietta, it remains a pretty astonishing work for one so young. Certainly, there are numerous examples of characteristically sparky, head-turning inspiration – those penetrating string harmonies at the start of the slow movement, for instance, or the breathless momentum of the Allegro scherzando finale (whose striking closing section recalls material from the opening Allegro ma non troppo).

Likewise, the Two Portraits make intriguing listening. Composed in August 1930 (just a couple of months prior to his first term at the RCM), the first is a ‘sketch for strings describing David’ (David Layton, a close friend of the 16-year-old Britten at Gresham’s School), whose emotional vehemence and harmonic restlessness nod towards Janacek and even Berg (symptomatic, perhaps, of his private teacher Frank Bridge’s refreshingly cosmopolitan outlook). Listen out, too, for some tantalizing pre-echoes of the ‘Wiener Walzer’ movement from the Frank Bridge Variations when the music switches into 3/4 time at 5'38''. By contrast, its partner is a restrained self-portrait (subtitled ‘E.B.B.’) for solo viola and strings, whose dignified main theme possesses an almost Holstian sobriety. Oddly enough, only the seven-minute ‘fanfare’ for piano and orchestra, Young Apollo, fails to improve much with repetition. Britten himself was the soloist for the 1939 broadcast premiere in Toronto, but he evidently had his doubts (daringly, the music never strays from its glinting opening A major tonality) and withdrew the piece before the end of the year.

Kent Nagano directs a set of performances which are beyond praise in their luminous refinement and blistering commitment to the cause; all three of his distinguished soloists are on unimpeachable form throughout. Moreover, Erato’s Bridgewater Hall sound quality is sumptuously realistic to match, and the whole enterprise forms an exemplary companion disc to this conductor’s admirable 1997 realization of the original four-act version of Billy Budd (also on Erato, 3/98).

Review by Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

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Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kent Nagano - Britten: Double Concerto; Two Portraits; Sinfonietta; Young Apollo (1999)

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Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kent Nagano - Britten: Double Concerto; Two Portraits; Sinfonietta; Young Apollo (1999)

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Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kent Nagano - Britten: Double Concerto; Two Portraits; Sinfonietta; Young Apollo (1999)

Close

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Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kent Nagano - Britten: Double Concerto; Two Portraits; Sinfonietta; Young Apollo (1999)

Close