A Celebration for Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Wigmore Hall, London
Tuesday, 22 November 1983, 7.30 pm
Peter Pears (reader)
Neil Mackie (tenor)
Nicholas Daniel (oboe)
Richard Watkins (horn)
lain Burnside (piano)
Julius Drake (piano)
Brodsky String Quartet:
Michael Thomas (violin)
Ian Belton (violin)
Paul Cassidy (viola)
Jacqueline Thomas (cello)
Music for Ben on his Seventieth Birthday Introduced by Sir Peter Pears
Three Divertimenti (1936): Brodsky String Quartet
1 March
2 Waltz
3 Burlesque
Temporal Variations (1936): Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake
Theme
Oration
March
Exercises
Commination
Chorale
Waltz
Polka Resolution
3 Holiday Diary, Op.5: lain Burnside
1 Early Morning Bathe
2 Sailing
3 Fun Fair
4 Night
A Sitwell Sequence: Neil Mackie, Richard Watkins, lain Burnside
Canticle III: Still falls the Rain
Reading by Peter Pears from ‘The Two Loves’
Epilogue
So, out of the dark, see our great Spring begins -
Our Christ, the new Song, breaking out in the fields and hedgerows, The heart of Man~ 0, the new temper of Christ, in veins and branches: [Metamorphosis]
5 Unpublished Songs: Neil Mackie, Iain Burnside
When Britten decided to set a cycle of poems, all by one poet, such as Auden (On this Island), Hardy (winter Words), Donne (The Holy Sonnets of John Donne), Blake (Songs and Proverbs of william Blake) or Soutar (Who are these Children?), he would usually set a quantity of them before he decided on the final grouping, so that there are songs extra to the published cycles by all these poets. Britten made no plans for publishing them, being concerned solely with the new piece in progress. In this group the exception is the poem by Peter Burra, a close friend of mine since school days, who met Ben in Barcelona at the ISCM Festival of 1936. He travelled as a music critic for The Times for a year or two until his too early death in a plane crash in 1937. He was the author of two short biographies, of Van Gogh and of Wordsworth, and he wrote a perceptive Introductory Essay for the Everyman Edition of A Passage to India. Peter Pears [1983]
Two Songs by Thomas Hardy (1953): First performance
The Children and Sir Nameless
If it’s Ever Spring Again
Not Even Summer Yet (1937) (Peter Burra):
First London performance
Three Rhymes by William Soutar (1969): *First performance #first London performance
Dawtie’s Devotion*
The Gully#
Tradition#
6 String Quartet No.3, Op.94: Brodsky String Quartet
1 Duets With moderate movement
2 Ostinato Very fast
3 Solo Very calm
4 Burlesque Fast – con fuoco
5 Recitative and Passacaglia (La Serenissima) Slow – slowly moving
THE BRITTEN ESTATE
A Message from Sir Peter Pears and His Fellow Executors
Benjamin Britten, who died in 1976, was unshakeable in his commitment to peace and non-violence. It was a major theme throughout his life, and he never altered his mind about it. It was also a major musical theme, and one of his greatest works, War Requiem, Op.66 – a fervent plea for peace and condemnation of war – is at this very time finding new generations of listeners all over the world.
On 22 November this year, had Britten lived, he would have been 70. His Executors, Sir Peter Pears, Isador Caplan and Donald Mitchell, wish to mark the occasion in a way that they feel Benjamin Britten would have approved, especially at a time when the threat of nuclear extinction and countless acts of carnage and violence are part of everyday life.
It is in the spirit of peace and reconciliation of which War Requiem is an embodiment that Britten’s Estate is making donations totalling £10,000 to the following causes for their peace and general educational work:
THE UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION
Britten’s Voices for Today, Op.75, was commissioned for the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations, and had a simultaneous triple premiere in New York, Paris and London on 24 October 1965.
THE SAVE THE CHILDREN FUND
for whose fiftieth anniversary Britten composed Children’s Crusade, Op.82, in 1969.
THE PEACE PLEDGE UNION
with which Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears were associated for nearly fifty years.
The Executors make these gifts in no narrow political perspective. They recall the words of Wilfred Owen which Britten inscribed on the title-page of War Requiem: ‘All a poet can do today is warn’. That warning was never more timely, alas, than in Britten’s seventieth birthday year, when it is not the fate of his music that is in the balance but the survival of the human race.
Britten still speaks to us through his music. He would certainly have added his voice to the voices of his Executors in their call to governments and people everywhere to refrain from violence and to stand for peace.