Britten Abroad
Susan Gritton / Mark Padmore / Iain Burnside
- Label
- Signum Classics
- Catalogusnummer
- SIGCD 122
- EAN / barcode
- 0635212012222
- Verschijningsdatum
- 30 april 2008
Britten’s extraordinary skill and fluency for setting his own native language has sometimes obscured the brilliance with which he embraced a wide range of foreign poetry throughout his career. In fact Britten left a series of exquisite settings, some of his very finest, in French, Italian, Latin, German, Russian, Scot dialect and Medieval English; and the role-call of poets attests to the diversity and sophistication of his literary tastes, including the work of Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Artur Rimbaud, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Friedrich Hölderlin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander Pushkin, Bertolt Brecht and William Soutar. The earliest of these works (written when Britten was just fourteen) was the Quatre chansons françaises, settings of Hugo and Verlaine for high voice and orchestra, written in the summer of 1928 for his parents’ twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. Les Illuminations followed a decade later; Latin settings were a constant throughout his career, for his many liturgical settings and notably in War Requiem and the Cantata misericordium; we find Scots dialect in his Souter settings, Who are these children? and his authentic response to the challenge of early English texts is demonstrated in his mystery-play settings, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac and Noye’s Fludde, and profoundly so in one of his very last works, the choral setting of eight medieval English lyrics, Sacred and Profane. But Britten’s settings of Italian, Russian, French and German, performed here by Susan Gritton, Mark Padmore and Iain Burnside are certainly amongst the most distinctive and very finest examples of his art, each fashioned specifically for a much-loved and favoured artist.
Tracklist
- 01 Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22: Sonetto XVI - Si come nella penna e nell'inchiostro 02:09
- 02 Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22: Sonetto XXXI - A che piu debb'io mai l'intensa voglia 01:35
- 03 Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22: Sonetto XXX - Veggio co'bei vostri occhi un dolce lume 04:21
- 04 Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22: Sonetto LV - Tu sa'ch'io so, signior mie, che tu sai 02:03
- 05 Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22: Sonetto XXXVIII - Redete a gli occhi miei, o fonte o fiume 02:02
- 06 Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22: Sonetto XXXII - S'un casto amor, s'una pieta superna 01:27
- 07 Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22: Sonetto XXIV - Spirto ben nato, in cui si specchia evede 04:25
- 08 The Poet's Echo, Op. 76: Echo 03:03
- 09 The Poet's Echo, Op. 76: My Heart... 01:51
- 10 The Poet's Echo, Op. 76: Angel 02:15
- 11 The Poet's Echo, Op. 76: The Nightingale and the Rose 04:00
- 12 The Poet's Echo, Op. 76: Epigram 00:48
- 13 The Poet's Echo, Op. 76: Lines written during a sleepless night 04:24
- 14 Four French Folksong Arrangements: La Nöel Passée 03:52
- 15 Four French Folksong Arrangements: Voici le Printemps 02:02
- 16 Four French Folksong Arrangements: Fileuse 02:01
- 17 Four French Folksong Arrangements: Le roi s'en va-t'en chasse 02:12
- 18 Um Mitternacht 04:26
- 19 Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, Op. 61: Menschenbeifall 01:32
- 20 Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, Op. 61: Die Heimat 02:31
- 21 Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, Op. 61: Sokrates und Alcibiades 02:30
- 22 Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, Op. 61: Die Jugend 02:03
- 23 Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, Op. 61: Hälfte des Lebens 02:22
- 24 Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, Op. 61: Die Linien des Lebens 02:24
- 25 Four French Folksong Arrangements: La belle est au jardin d'amour 02:51
- 26 Four French Folksong Arrangements: Il est quelqu'un sur terre 04:35
- 27 Four French Folksong Arrangements: Eho! Eho! 01:59
- 28 Four French Folksong Arrangements: Quand j'étais chez mon père 02:06
