Friday May 10th, 2013 - This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten (above), and this evening Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center paid tribute to the great Briton with a lovely concert of intimate vocal and instrumental works.
The first half of the programme was given over to works written in the first quarter-century of the composer's lifetime. These miniature masterworks show the composer's pristine style as well as his ability to make us smile one moment at his wit and charm only to have our heart pierced seconds later with feelings of longing or loss. Britten is not known as a melodist, yet these works works nevertheless sing with their own distinctive lyricism.
A particularly brilliant assemblage of musicians were on hand for this Britten birthday party: the members of the Orion String Quartet - recently heard at CMS playing Schubert - joined pianist Gloria Chien and oboist James Austin Smith in various capacities during the program's first half, with the full quartet uniting in Three Divertimentos. After the break, Ms. Chien wove a pianistic spell around the voices of tenor Anthony Dean Griffey and counter-tenor Daniel Taylor in one of the composer's canticles, and the Society's co-artistic directors Wu Han and David Finckel brought the celebration to an inspiring close playing the C-major cello sonata.
Orion's violinist Todd Phillips and Ms. Chien opened the performance with the five-part Suite for Violin and Piano (composed 1934-35) in which rhythmic variety and vivid interplay of the two 'voices' set the tone for the evening: their playing was subtle and immaculate, with Mr. Phillips sustaining an uncanny trill in the final lilting Waltz.
Mr. Smith (above) then appeared; slender and graceful, the oboist's stage persona has a dancer-like quality. He and Ms. Chien joined in a witty and tonally appealing pair of Insect Pieces (1935) depicting the grasshopper and the wasp, respectively. The voice of the oboe then blends with violin, viola and cello - the Orion's Daniel Phillips, Stephen Tenenbom and Timothy Eddy - in the 1932 Phantasy Quartet in which the cello launches the piece with a march-like tread. A miniature parade comes looming up out of the distance, pauses to illumine our day with a string trio before the oboist takes up the pace again and the music vanishes into the air as magically as it appeared.
The Three Divertimentos (1936) have a rather theatrical quality: a march, a sentimental waltz, and a rambunctious burlesque seem, in retrospect, to reflect the mood of Britain as the rise of Hitler began to give a foretaste disasters to come. The militaristic irony or the march, the longing for the past of the waltz, and the devil-may-care brashness of the burlesque were each vividly evoked by the Orion's playing.
After the intermission, Ms. Chien intoned the quiet ceremonial opening theme of the marvelous Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, dating from 1952. In this hauntingly beautiful telling of the biblical tale of a father prepared to sacrifice his own son to god's greater glory, the voices of Anthony Dean Griffey and Daniel Taylor created a remarkably poetic atmosphere. Individually the two voices characterize the father and the son; entwined, in other-worldy harmonies, the two timbres represent the voice of god. Tony Griffey, whose singing of Britten's Peter Grimes and of the WAR REQUIEM always make me wish to hear him sing Vere in BILLY BUDD, brought his burnished lyricism and silky dynamic control into play while Mr. Taylor, his voice depicting boyish wonderment and eventual resolve, was vividly expressive.
The seasoned rapport of David Finckel and Wu Han gave the concert's concluding performance of the cello sonata an intimate clarity: the musicians communicate magically with one another and with the listener. Composed for and premiered by Mstislav Rostropovich, the sonata takes a panoramic view of cello technique, finding its heart in the Elegia which the duo today explored with a poignant depth of feeling.
- Britten Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 6 (1934–35)
- Britten Two Insect Pieces for Oboe and Piano (1935)
- Britten Phantasy Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 2 (1932)
- Britten Three Divertimentos for String Quartet (1936)
- Britten Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac for Countertenor, Tenor, and Piano, Op. 51 (1952)
- Britten Sonata in C major for Cello and Piano, Op. 65 (1960–61)