The Britten Sinfonia has presented a delightful and witty programme exploring the music created during Benjamin Britten's transformative 1939 summer in America with Aaron Copland. The concert, held at Kings Place in London, showcased works from this fruitful period, highlighting the mutual admiration between the two composers.
A Fruitful Vacation
In spring 1939, Britten and his future life partner, tenor Peter Pears, sailed to North America seeking "a vacation from the general European atmosphere." They did not return until mid-1942. This period, often overlooked in celebrations of Britten's legacy, is now being examined in the 50th anniversary year of his death. The Britten Sinfonia has taken on this challenge with a programme split mainly between works by Britten and Copland, who spent the summer of 1939 together in Woodstock, enjoying tennis, swimming, and mutual admiration.
Virtuosic Performances
Directing from the violin, Zoë Beyers led a taut and witty performance of Britten's Young Apollo, a fanfare commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The energetic string playing was complemented by pianist Huw Watkins' mercurial scales and delicate glissandos, which provoked audible giggles of delight from the audience.
The song cycle Les Illuminations showcased a subtler encounter between musical languages. Soprano Elizabeth Watts was relentlessly communicative, demonstrating total expressive control from her harshest lower register to the creamiest top notes. The Britten Sinfonia revelled in the score's rotation of solo lines, impish pizzicato, and fierce, characterful details.
Separating Britten's works, the Six Piano Preludes by writer and composer Paul Bowles offered a nod to the period when he and Britten fought over piano rights in a Brooklyn Heights houseshare. Watkins relished the woozy poetry of these miniatures, which could almost have been overheard in a jazz bar.
A Collaborative Second Half
After the interval, Ukrainian clarinettist Oleg Shebeta-Dragan delivered a blistering performance of Copland's Clarinet Concerto. For all its breathtaking virtuosity, the performance was thoroughly collective and collaborative. To close, Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring was performed in its original chamber scoring, travelling the gamut from crystalline vulnerability to weighted, rustic bowing and quasi-machinic precision. The work's flipbook of contrasts felt utterly inevitable, emerging organically from the ongoing musical conversation.
The Britten Sinfonia will perform this programme at The Apex in Bury St Edmunds on 19 May and at The Halls in Norwich on 20 May.
