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Review: Britten Songs (Bostridge)

Ian Bostridge may well be the busiest interpreter of Benjamin Britten in this the composer’s 100th birthday year. Previous recordings of Our Hunting Fathers and the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings have demonstrated the English tenor’s sensitive characterisation of text, but this latest collection of song cycles, written for Britten’s partner and muse Peter Pears, is Bostridge’s finest and most compelling offering yet. A big part of that is Antonio Pappano’s accompaniment. The duo collaborated on a Schubert album, but the eccentricities of Britten’s piano writing – all angular figurations and chiaroscuro effects he put into play himself – allow his imagination, and fingers, to run wild, whether bright and brilliant or sparse and eerie. Both performers vary their touch and articulation judiciously for a disc that is alive at every moment, leaving you hanging off every word. Listen to the way Bostridge leans into dissonance, gouging the text of Before Life and After from the late cycle Winter Words. Or the cat-and-mouse runs passed between singer and pianist in the nursery rhyme-like Wagtail and Baby. Bostridge’s intonation and enunciation are faultless but never characterless; I particularly relish how he shapes drawn-out melismas such as the sweet-toned “Seraphim”. His……

November 7, 2013