Like any other literary type, I suppose, the music historian does somc figurative “walking around the typewriter” before he sits down to begin an article. Sometimes this process can yield unexpected insights, as when I was thinking through my approach to the lone Piano Concerto of Edward Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). I remember rifiling through my Britten scores, and being exasperated at not finding this piece. The explanation was startling enough, considering the composer’s eminence-except for a two-piano reduction, no score of the Piano Concerto ever has been published ! But meantime I had been struck by the fact that virtually all of the Britten music in my library is vocal music. Broadly speaking that would include even such as the exquisite "Les Illuminations", which I came to know as the background for Frederick Ashton’s ballet of the same title. Somewhat arbitrarily the rubric might then be stretched to subsume the perennial Young Pers0n’s Guide to the Orchestra, which is similarly familiar for its balletic associations (Jerome Robbins’s immensely popular Fanfare) ; for this brilliant study in sonorities properly includes an interpolated commentary, and the composer has said flatly that the music should not be performed without it. All of this led me to a close perusal of the Britten catalogue. With due allowance for the early plethora of cinematic Gebrauchsmusik which was once his bread and butter, what is surprising in retrospect is that except for fiirtations with one or another of the standard forms (he tried each of them but once, as a rule), Britten presents a remarkable case indeed — a composer who has achieved not merely recognition but worldwide fame on the merits of his writing in a single genre ! Of course I mean his operas. That they are entirely worthy of this extraordinary success is another story, and by now it has been told a hundred times over...
James Lyons (from the original Liner Notes)
Marjorie Mitchell
Plays
Benjamin Britten
Frank Martin
Tracks
Benjamin Britten
(1913-1976)
Piano Concerto n° 1 in D major, Op. 13
1 I. Toccata (Allegro molto e con brio) 11:38
2 II. Waltz (Allegretto) 4:01
3 III. Impromptu (Andante lento) 8:13
4 IV. March (Allegro moderato) 8:46
Frank Martin
(1890-1974)
Preludes for Piano
5 N° 2. Allegretto tranquillo 1:33
6 N° 3. Tranquillo ma con moto 2:08
7 N° 5. Vivace 1:59
8 N° 7. Lento 5:01
9 N° 8. Vivace 3:27
*
Marjorie Mitchell - p
Recorded ca 1966