59.00 PLN

CD:

Nr kat.: 4668222
Label  : DECCA

Piano Duets Britten at Aldeburgh Festival

It is good to have on disc at last the duet-playing of Benjamin Britten and Sviatoslav Richter, recorded live at the Aldeburgh festival in the 60s. Britten himself once told me what problems he had. Richter, unused to sharing a keyboard, spread his elbows wide, making it very hard for Britten, playing second, to be expressive with his right hand. But you would hardly know that from these inspired performances. Schubert's Grand Duo and the F minor Fantasy, arguably the greatest of all piano duets, bring fast allegros, dazzlingly articulated, with andantes broad and expressive. The two Mozart sonatas on the second disc are similarly marked by extreme speeds, yet the power of these performances brings out the weight of argument. Momentary slips of ensemble matter not at all. From the previous decade comes the disc of Britten playing the "little" Mozart A major Piano Concerto, K414, and conducting two Haydn symphonies, recorded live in Jubilee Hall. The boxiness of the venue is painfully clear, though the performances are so electrifying one soon forgets it. The spontaneous wit of Britten as interpreter, both as pianist and conductor, comes over vividly. Britten's dynamic readings of the two Mozart symphonies are full of high contrasts, bringing out the drama while keeping within an intimate scale. In the two concert arias, Peter Pears as tenor soloist is not helped by a BBC studio acoustic with vibrato exaggerated, though the stylishness of the singing is a delight. The Bach cantatas and the Purcell Ode come from different sources. The Purcell performance of the 1693 Birthday Ode, Celebrate this Festival, is taken from the historic concert which opened the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1967; the solo singing is superb, not least from the countertenor, James Bowman, making his London debut. The Bach cantatas too could hardly be more characterful, particularly no 102, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau at his most commanding and Dame Janet Baker giving a heartfelt account of the aria Weh der Seele - Alas for the soul. https://www.theguardian.com/friday_review/story/0,3605,329671,00.html