Britten is widely celebrated for his profound connection with Suffolk’s flat, open landscapes, its coast and its rich birdlife of waders and waterfowl, one of which is celebrated in his opera (or ‘Church Parable’) Curlew River. It’s a curious paradox, then, that much of his music, even some that is most apparently rooted in that East Anglian region – including in his great ‘home coming’ opera of 1945, Peter Grimes – was profoundly inspired by music from even further East, virtually the other side of the world.
It was not through travelling East, but westwards across the Atlantic that Britten had his first encounter with Balinese music. In 1939, despondent about the rise of fascism, Europe’s fate and that of his own country, Britten left for the US just months before the outbreak of World War II. There, while in Long Island as house guest of the German émigré psychiatrist William Mayer, he met the Canadian composer and ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee. A sufferer of debilitating depression – hence his frequent visits to Dr Mayer – McPhee nonetheless played a vital role in researching and documenting music in Bali, living several years on the Indonesian island for that purpose.
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Bu hikaye BBC Music Magazine dergisinin September 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Look back in anguish
Despite Korngold's denials, there is much to suggest that his Symphony in F sharp is a grim depiction of the dark days of Nazism, argues Jessica Duchen
Come again?
If something is worth hearing once it's worth hearing again, explains Rebecca Franks, who charts a history of the use of echoes in music
THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
Music by women and composers of colour is not a separate set of pieces from the ones we know
A brilliant melting pot of discoverable works
Erik Levi enjoys Patricia Kopatchinskaja and friends' eloquent performances of lesser-known works by exiled composers
Pierre Boulez
Tom Stewart celebrates a composer, conductor and musical iconoclast for whom breaking from tradition was not an option but a must
Vienna's cacophonous concert ends to the sound of slapping
‘Fighting at a Schoenberg concert.
Molto humoroso
Cartoonist and broadcaster Gerard Hoffnung lampooned the world of classical music with splendid affection and wit, writes Andrew Green
There and back again
With retrospectives on album and in concert this month, Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore reflects on his years in Middle-earth and tells Michael Beek why he has a lot to thank the LPO for...
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Pick a theme... and name your seven favourite examples
Composer-conductor Odaline de la Martinez prizes tempo, swing and bounce in her top rhythmic works
Crystal clear with plenty of punch
The great is, they say, the enemy of the good, and that is certainly the case with David Sanger’s interpretation of Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 1, which stands head and shoulders above a strong field of alternative versions.
