#britten100

[wtbckut]

2013.11.20 Playlist - Celebrating Britten

Benjamin Britten - War Requiem, Sanctus (audio documentary from the premiere rehearsal)

Benjamin Britten - War Requiem, Sanctus

Benjamin Britten - Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, mvt 1: Prologue - Song: Ian Bostridge

Benjamin Britten - Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, mvt 2: Pastoral - Song: Ian Bostridge

Benjamin Britten (arr.) - Folksong arrangements, I wonder as I wander

Benjamin Britten (arr.) - Folksong arrangements, The bonny Earl o’Moray

Franz Schubert - Winterreise, Gute Nacht - perf. by Benjamin Britten (piano) and Peter Pears (tenor)

Benjamin Britten & Colin McPhee (arr. and perf.) - Pemungkah - from the album The Roots of Gamelan (first recordings of Balinese music, 1941)

Benjamin Britten & Colin McPhee (arr. and perf.) - Rébong - from the album The Roots of Gamelan (first recordings of Balinese music, 1941)

Frank Bridge - Sonata for cello and piano, mvt 1 - perf. by Benjamin Britten (piano) and Mstislav Rostropovich (cello)

Benjamin Britten (arr.) - Folksong arrangements, The holy and the ivy - Song: Nicolas Phan

Benjamin Britten (arr.) - Folksong arrangements, Greensleeves - Song: Nicolas Phan

Benjamin Britten - A hymn to the Virgin

Benjamin Britten - Friday Afternoons, No. 2: A tragic story

Benjamin Britten - Friday Afternoons, No. 3: Cuckoo!

John Tavener - The Whale

Benjamin Britten - Canticle V - Song: Nicolas Phan

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw, Act Two; Interlude: Variation IX; Scene 2: The Bells

Benjamin Britten - Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, mvt 7: Sonnet - Song: Peter Pears

Benjamin Britten - Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, mvt 8: Epilogue - Song: Peter Pears

[myspiveyhall-blog]

Thought-provoking piece about celebrating these anniversaries.

[ruhevoll]

"his whole career was a quest for something new – not just for the sake of 'newness', but because he hated to take the easy way and repeat himself"

[wherenotrollhasgonebefore]

ok so since it is Benjamin Britten's 100th Anniversary today, here is the Dies Irae from his War Requiem! :)

[coffeeandoperatics]

I'm having Peter Grimes induced emotions.

Happy 100th, ya old queen. 

[atimetherewas]

a 100th birthday hansel

the day is finally here. and before i get to all of my birthday festivities, it's time to get a little serious.

Britten came into my life in 2007 by accident. while researching for a paper on Ligeti's Horn Trio, i came across Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings (which i'm listening to right now) and in stumbling upon it, a feeling came over me that i still am unable to explain. "The splendour falls/on castle walls" resonated in my mind and the most perfect two lines of text i had ever heard in the sense that the way they were set made the line clear and easy to visualize as if the sentence were not some abstract, poetic text. it was beautiful and unabashedly so. well i've been listening to music all of my life, especially vocal music so why is it that i hadn't felt that feeling until then?

i took the recording home with me. the next thing i knew, i was checking out more Britten recordings. and then, during an errand at the Juilliard bookstore, I saw a small Britten biography on sale. i bought it immediately. i've never devoured a book so. everything about him, his life, his music, his personality, reached me at my very core. it was so visceral that i knew it couldn't be a fluke. 

and it wasn't.

shortly after, i went to school for musicology and the more i studied, the more i realized i wanted to make Britten scholarship my life's work. five years later, i find myself in a PhD program, having talked and written about Britten extensively, meeting amazing people as a result (including my partner) and with those very words i first heard all those years ago tattooed on my arm. they still have the same effect on me they did that spring day. and that's what matters to me.

i could talk about how great of a composer i believe Britten to be but i'm not here to convince you. i hope that you have an opportunity to listen to some of his music at some point and are able to make your own conclusions. i hope your experience with Britten is a happy one (or at least a thoughtful one). but i will say that nothing makes me happier than the exposure he's received. i do think the world should know him and maybe, just maybe, someone will come to love him as i have. i have been profoundly lucky in that regard.

--

i hope you've been able to hear a little Britten today, if not, check out Q2's 24-hour stream of Britten's music hosted by Nico Muhly, he's been playing some absolutely fantastic stuff.

i will be back tomorrow with pictures from my Britten birthday party tonight, including my Serenade tattoo. 

happy 100th birthday, Ben. you are missed and loved.

[devilishlyoperatic]

BBC RADIO THREE FAVORITED A TWEET OF MINE ABOUT BENJAMIN BRITTEN AND I PRACTICALLY NEVER TWEET

HAH

[leadingtone]

[myspiveyhall-blog]

Tenor Nicholas Phan's Brooklyn tribute to Benjamin Britten

[ruhevoll]

This is like 100% ridiculous

[considermycat]

A Spotify playlist for #Britten100: key moments as identified in John Bridcut's Faber Pocket Guide to Britten. 

See this blog post for more details. 

[atimetherewas]

always it woke him, even in France.

so after a busy few weeks & a trip to the hospital, i can finally update about Brittenmania, especially the conference at Illinois State.

before i say anything else, I have to give a huge congrats to Justin Vickers & Vicki Stroeher for putting this conference together -- it was a mighty undertaking and they made it look like child's play.

i had been looking forward to this conference all year; all of my favorite people would be there and everything about the conference looked interesting and exciting. it really started for me when i was semi-stranded at the Normal train station with Paul Kildea (we ended up sharing a cab, talking to a very enthusiastic cabbie about the sights of Bloomington-Normal).

(before i go on, can i just mention how incredibly cold it was? i left 70° North Carolina & it was a shock to the system)

a quick dinner was eaten before piling on to the big yellow school bus that would take us to Illinois State. first on the docket was a performance of the War Requiem, the forces pulled from the university and its environs. it was a laudable performance with lots of beautiful and moving moments and i hope that it was an experience for those performing it. this was a long night that followed; lots of drinks and lots of conversations. the conference officially started the next day with an onslaught of papers, including my own. Justin also asked me to chronicle the whole conference so in addition to preparing and giving my paper, i livetweeted the whole thing (check it out here https://twitter.com/brittenatisu; also look for the #bb100usa hashtag on twitter & instagram) -- what followed included great papers, performances from the ISU faculty and students and an ACDA conference focusing on Britten's choral works. it really was a great way to end my conference season and it gave me a LOT to chew on. the field of Britten scholarship is so rich and has come so far in the past 15-20 years. i think, compared to other areas of musicological scholarship, we're quite young and we're just getting to that point to where we can branch out. (remember, Britten's only been dead for 37 years…) and the diversity of topics and approaches to Britten's life and works, be they musicological, theoretical, interdisciplinary, or all of the above, makes me excited for what's to come. 

i wish i could talk about every paper and every performance but that would take far more than this blog post. i really recommend checking out the #bb100usa hashtag -- lots of people contributed and there's lots of good information there.

---

in total, i went to three conferences presenting papers on Britten this year and its been an amazing (and chaotic) experience. just trying to keep up on all of the scholarly bits floating around out there plus performances overwhelms me (i wish i could report on it all!) and i'm so glad that this centenary year has been so involved.

in the past week or so, A Midsummer Night's Dream opened at the Met to great reviews (i listened to the livestream of the premiere, loved it) and the War Requiem has been performed a handful of times, in Baltimore, London, and in New York. there was also another performance of the complete Canticles at Carnegie Hall with Ian Bostridge, Iestyn Davies (who was also Oberon in Midsummer), and Julius Drake. i was supposed to be at that performance (backstage and everything) but at the last minute it fell through. i heard it was amazing, of course, and i have a recording from earlier this year coming my way, which of course, i'll talk about here. performances are ramping up as we get closer and closer to the day itself. my hope is that the fever will continue past Nov. 22nd -- and i think it will. across the pond, performances of Death in Venice, Curlew River, & Noyes Fludde are all happening and/or taking shape and it kills me not to be a part of them…luckily, i have a man on the inside & i can live vicariously through him.

i hope to do an interview with my dear friend and piccolo/third flute with the Oregon Symphony Zachariah Galatis on his experience rehearsing and performing the War Requiem for you guys and now that things are quieting down, i hope to get some more interviews up here. also, i hope to have pictures from my upcoming Britten Birthday Bash (including -- hopefully -- a new tattoo) happening on the 22nd, i can't wait. 

[macshopberlin]

[brikcius]

Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976): Tema 'Sacher' František Brikcius - Cello Recorded at the National Gallery - Convent of St Agnes of Bohemia in Prague, 2011. ******************** 12 composers of Swiss patron Paul Sacher (1906 - 1999) eSACHERe Conrad Beck (1901 - 1989): Drei Epigramme Luciano Berio (1925 - 2003): Les mots sont allés ... Pierre Boulez (1925): Messagesquisse* Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976): Tema 'Sacher' Henri Dutilleux (1916 - 2013): 3 Strophes sur le nom de Sacher Wolfgang Fortner (1907 - 1987): Thema und Variationen Alberto Ginastera (1916 - 1983): Puneña No. 2 Cristobal Halffter (1930): Variation über das Thema eSACHERe Hans Werner Henze (1926 - 2012): Cappriccio Heinz Holliger (1939): Chaconne Klaus Huber (1924): Transpositio ad infinitum Witold Lutoslawski (1913 - 1994): Sacher-Variation FRANTIŠEK BRIKCIUS - Cello *Guests: Jan Talich - conductor & eSACHERe Cello Ensemble ******************** Czech Cellist František Brikcius - http://www.Brikcius.com Subscribe - http://www.YouTube.com/FrantisekBrikcius Like - http://www.FaceBook.com/FestivalBrikcius Like - http://www.facebook.com/Brikcius.Fran... Follow @Brikcius - http://Twitter.com/Brikcius Follow @Brikcius - http://Instagram.com/Brikcius Follow - http://plus.google.com/u/0/1055917937... Join "FESTIVAL BRIKCIUS" - chamber music series at the Stone Bell House in Prague (Spring - Autumn) http://Festival.Brikcius.com ******************** New video every month (every 2nd Thursday)! Complete performance of all 12 eSACHERe compositions! ********************

[ruhevoll]

MORE BRITTEN IS ALWAYS APPROPRIATE