A chronologically wide-ranging Britten programme performed with unerring sensitivity and much quiet insight. The Movement for wind sextet (here receiving its premiere recording) dates from 1930. Britten composed it during his last term at Gresham’s School (a second movement followed in August) and annotator Philip Reed suggests that a hearing of Janacek’s identically scored Mladi may have acted as a possible spur (the precocious 16-year-old was a voracious score-reader and radio listener at the time). The Sinfonietta, which Britten completed two years later while still a student at the RCM, represents a remarkable achievement for one so young. Amazingly inventive and concise, it bears a dedication to his mentor, Frank Bridge, whose tangily pastoral idiom can be discerned in the rapt central Andante. To my ears, the Nash Ensemble’s new account could hardly be bettered: in this same movement, for example, how perceptively Friend and his colleagues gauge (and sustain) the mood of gentle rapture, and how effortlessly they handle the almost Sibelian transition into the “Tarantella” finale.
Britten’s and Auden’s unforgettable collaboration for the end sequence from the documentary Night Mail dates from 1936 when both artists were briefly employed by the GPO Film Unit. Remarkably, this is its first commercial recording – and a marvellous one it is, too, with Nigel Hawthorne the exemplary reciter. Three years later, Britten was approached by the BBC to write the incidental music for an adaptation of T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. Scored for a small ensemble comprising flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, harp and percussion, the present miniature concert suite abounds in witty motivic borrowings from The Ring and, in the fourth movement entitled “Bird Music”, a few other instantly recognizable sources.
Last October, I highly praised Iona Brown’s version of Lachrymae ??¸??with the Norwegian CO on Virgin Classics (and violist Lars Anders Tomter’s sensitive contribution in particular). Not only is this Hyperion newcomer swifter by some three-and-a-half minutes (12'51'' as against 16'28''), it perhaps better conveys the unremitting concentration of Britten’s questing inspiration, not to mention the wonderful luminosity of the string writing (this 1976 arrangement of the 1950 viola and piano original was Britten’s last completed work). The disc opens with a persuasive rendering of Phaedra from Jean Rigby. Eloquently though she responds (and the final climax certainly rises to a memorable pitch of intensity), her contribution overall is perhaps not quite as characterful or involving as that of, say, Dame Janet Baker (the work’s dedicatee) or Felicity Palmer, who gives an unusually tough and compellingly individual portrayal.
With first-rate sound and balance throughout this is an excellent anthology.'