Composer: Benjamin Britten, Carl Kossmaly, Konradin Kreutzer, Franz Lachner, Hugo Pierson, Franz Peter Schubert
Performer: Michael Gees, Christoph Prégardien, Olivier Darbellay
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Challenge Classics
Catalogue: CC72771
Release: 2017
Size: 209 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Britten: The Heart of the Matter
01. Prologue
02. Reading. The Earth of My Heart Was Broken and Gaped Low
03. Fanfare. Where Are the Seeds of the Universal Fire
04. Reading. In the Hour When the Sapphire of the Bone
05. Song: We Are the Darkness in the Heat of the Day
06 .Reading. In Such a Heat of the Earth
07. Canticle III, Op. 55 “Still Falls the Rain”
08. Reading. I See Christ’s Wounds Weep in the Rose on the Wall
09. Epilogue
10. Lachner: Die Seejungfern
11. Kreutzer: Das Mühlrad
12. Lachner: Herbst
13. Kreutzer: Das Ständchen
14. Kossmaly: Sehnsucht
15. Kossmaly: Du schönes Fischermädchen
16. Pierson: Jägers Abschied
17. Schubert: Auf dem Strom, D943, Op. post. 119
Challenge Classics is delighted to present this unique disc of songs for tenor, horn and piano with works by Britten, Kossmaly, Lachner, Schubert, Pierson and Kreutzer. The album showcases three outstanding musicians, Christoph Pregardien (tenor), Olivier Darbellay (horn) and Michael Gees (piano) performing rare repertoire with panache and refi nement. In 1956, Benjamin Britten created, in collaborati on with the poet Edith Sitwell, a musico-literary programme for the Aldeburgh Festival. This programme, entitled “The Heart of the Matt er” centred around Canticle III, a work for Tenor, Horn and Piano. In 1983, Peter Pears revised and revived the work, and it is in this version that “The Heart of the Matt er” has been performed since and can be found on this album.
In 1955 Britten’s composed Still Falls the Rain, a setting for tenor, piano and horn of a poem by Edith Sitwell – the third of his five Canticles, written at various points in his life between 1947 and 1974, with three of them written as memorials: it is not a cycle as such, but merely a collection; instrumentation differs on each piece, and several are based on non-sacred texts. Sitwell, who attended the first performance, was overwhelmed by the work and her response led her to be invited to the 1956 Aldeburgh Festival where she and Britten would collaborate on a programme of her poetry to include further settings specially written for the occasion by Britten, for the same cast: tenor, horn and piano, with an additional narrator for some poems deliberately not set to music. For the event, entitled The Heart of the Matter, Britten composed extra music to surround and complement Canticle III which formed the centrepiece of the presentation. In 1983, Peter Pears revised and revived the work, and it is in this version that The Heart of the Matter has been performed since. For the world premiere, Sitwell recited her poems, Britten was at the piano, Peter pears sung and Dennis Brain tooted the horn. For the present recording, Christophe Prégardien sings and narrates the poems, Olivier Darbellay plays the horn, Michael Gees is at the piano. As a complement to the Britten work, the trio plays several songs from the Romantic period written for piano, horn and voice, by Conradin Kreutzer, Franz Lachner and Henry Hugh Pierson, closing that superb album with Schubert’s Auf dem Strom.