Amidst a host of treasured Aldeburgh memories dating right back to the festival's inception, nothing in my mind glows more vividly than Britten's revival of Schumann's Faust in June 1972. A recording was made on the same Snape platform shortly afterwards with some, if not all, of the original soloists, a recording specially timed by Decca for release in November 1973 in celebration of Britten's sixtieth birthday. Even if a dozen rival versions had emerged since then I doubt if any conductor's imaginative response to the work—intermittently preoccupying Schumann from 1844 until the year before his breakdown—could have proved more revelatory. So this excellently reproduced CD is an obligatory purchase for every Schumann devotee.
Of the soloists, the main responsibility of course rests with Fischer-Dieskau in the title-role. Once again I found myself marvelling at his rich savouring of words, even if he sometimes hits the odd note or two in the more operatically conceived Part 2 (like Part 1 written after Part 3, by which time Schumann had moved from a Mendelssohn-dominated Leipzig to a Wagner-dominated Dresden). But the great dramatic moments of blinding, visionary dreams and death are profoundly moving, and he at once adopts a more mellifluously lyrical style when returning as Doctor Marianus in the holier context of Part 3. In the Gretchen-inspired Part 1 Elizabeth Harwood touchingly combines tonal purity and maidenly innocence with acute vulnerability, and John Shirley-Quirk is a darkly sinister Mephistopheles. Alike as Ariel and Pater Ecstaticus Peter Pears enchants with his liquidity and super-sensitive phrasing, and the smaller parts (despite a little initial uncertainty from Jennnifer Vyvyan and Robert Lloyd) all contribute their own distinctive shades of colour so important in this score. As for the Aldeburgh Festival Chorus and Wandsworth School Choir I can only repeat that ''if (presumably) non-professional musicians can be made to sing like this, then let us have more festivals''. Whether as Gretchen's threateners of retribution, Ariel's attendant spirits, mocking lemurs digging Faust's grave, or angels and blessed boys, they respond to Britten's every atmospheric demand with unfailing immediacy and pliability. The final ''Chorus Mysticus'', sung here in the first of Schumann's two versions, is truly awe-struck (likewise the remarkable lead into it).
The ECO in its turn plainly shares the conductor's appreciation of felicities of scoring. Only the overture (written last) disappoints. Here I wish Britten and Pears had done a little more of that thinning-out of Schumann's occasionally over-thick texture to which they confessed at the 1972 festival.'