 | |
| Author | Paul Kildea |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Biography |
| Published | January 2013 |
| Publisher | Allen Lane |
| Pages | 665 |
| ISBN | 978-0-14-192430-4 |
| OCLC | 812688737 |
Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century is a book by the Australian author and composer Paul Kildea first published in January 2013 to mark the centenary year of British composer Benjamin Britten. [1] [2] [3] The book was featured on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in February 2013. [4]
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes (1945), the War Requiem (1962) and the orchestral showpiece The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1945).
The War Requiem, Op. 66, is a large-scale setting of the Requiem composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The War Requiem was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I.
Frank Bridge was an English composer, violist and conductor.
Albert Herring, Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten.
Noye's Fludde is a one-act opera by the British composer Benjamin Britten, intended primarily for amateur performers, particularly children. First performed on 18 June 1958 at that year's Aldeburgh Festival, it is based on the 15th-century Chester "mystery" or "miracle" play which recounts the Old Testament story of Noah's Ark. Britten specified that the opera should be staged in churches or large halls, not in a theatre.
Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rumba (1938) and of the Storm Clouds Cantata, featured in both versions of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man who Knew Too Much, in 1934 and 1956.
Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20, for orchestra is a symphony written by Benjamin Britten in 1940 at the age of 26. It was one of several works commissioned from different composers by the Japanese government to mark Emperor Jimmu's 2600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire. The Japanese government rejected the Sinfonia for its use of Latin titles from the Catholic Requiem for its three movements and for its somber overall character, but it was received positively at its world premiere in New York on 29 March 1941 under John Barbirolli. A performance in Boston under Serge Koussevitzky led to the commission of the opera Peter Grimes from the Koussevitzky Music Foundations.
Britten's Children is a scholarly 2006 book by John Bridcut that describes the English composer Benjamin Britten's relationship with several adolescent boys. Bridcut has been praised for treating such a sensitive subject in "an impeccably unsensational tone". The Britten-Pears Foundation described the book as having been "enthusiastically received as shedding new light on one of the most interesting aspects of Britten's life and career, in a study that is thoroughly researched, wonderfully readable and thought-provoking". Bridcut's book followed his television documentary Britten's Children shown on BBC2 in June 2004.
Antonio Brosa was a Spanish violinist.
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10, is a work for string orchestra by Benjamin Britten. It was written in 1937 at the request of Boyd Neel, who conducted his orchestra at the premiere of the work at that year's Salzburg Festival. It was the work that brought Britten to international attention.
This England is a classical music album by the Oregon Symphony under the artistic direction of Carlos Kalmar, released by Dutch record label PentaTone Classics in November 2012. The album was recorded at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon, at five performances in February and May 2012. It contains works by three English 20th-century composers: Edward Elgar's Cockaigne , Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 5, and "Four Sea Interludes" and "Passacaglia" from Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes. The recording was the orchestra's second under Kalmar's leadership, following Music for a Time of War (2011), which also included works by Britten and Vaughan Williams. This England received positive critical reception but failed to chart.
Mont Juic, suite of Catalan dances for orchestra, was written jointly by Lennox Berkeley and Benjamin Britten in 1937. Named for Montjuïc, it was published as Berkeley's Op. 9 and Britten's Op. 12.
Sophie Adele Wyss was a Swiss soprano who made her career as a concert singer and broadcaster in the UK. She was noted for her performances of French works, many of them new to Britain, for giving the world premieres of Benjamin Britten's orchestral song cycles Our Hunting Fathers (1936) and Les Illuminations (1940), and for encouraging other composers to set English and French texts. Among those who wrote for her were Lennox Berkeley, Arnold Cooke, Roberto Gerhard, Elizabeth Maconchy, Peter Racine Fricker, Alan Rawsthorne and Mátyás Seiber.
Clytie May Hine, was an Australian-born operatic soprano who became a renowned voice teacher in New York.
Paul Francis Kildea is an Australian conductor and author, considered an expert on Benjamin Britten.
Ethel Bartlett (1896–1978) and Rae Robertson (1893–1956), popularly known as Bartlett and Robertson, were a husband-and-wife classical piano duo who were credited with popularising two-piano music in Europe and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s through their extensive touring, recordings, and radio performances. Of English and Scottish background respectively, Bartlett and Robertson met during their studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London and married in 1921. Although they initially pursued solo careers, they teamed up as duo-pianists in the late 1920s and conducted annual international tours for over two decades. Several major composers of their era wrote duo-piano compositions especially for them, including Sir Arnold Bax, Benjamin Britten, Lennox Berkeley, and the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů.
Composer of the Week is a long-running biographical music programme produced by BBC Cymru Wales and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. It is broadcast daily from Monday to Friday at 12 noon for an hour, each week's programmes being a self-contained series of five dedicated to a particular composer or a group of related composers. With the "great composers", weeks dedicated to them tend to focus on a particular aspect of their life or works. The series has been written and presented by Donald Macleod since 1999. Sometimes recordings are made on location with Macleod visiting composers at home - such as the Harrison Birtwistle episodes in October 2019.
Serenade for Tenor, Saxophone and Orchestra is a musical composition by Lyle Chan.
Phantasy Quartet, Op. 2, is the common name of a piece of chamber music by Benjamin Britten, a quartet for oboe and string trio composed in 1932. In the composer's catalogue, it is given as Phantasy, subtitled: Quartet in one movement for oboe, violin, viola, violoncello. It was first performed in August 1933 as a BBC broadcast.
Plymouth Town is a ballet composed by Benjamin Britten in 1931. A typical performance lasts about 25 minutes.
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