Britten - Curlew River - A Parable for Church Performance op.71

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Curlew River

A Parable for Church Performance Op.71 (1964)

Philip Langridge, Thomas Allen, Gidon Saks, Simon Keenlyside

London Voices, Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Conductor: Sir Neville Marriner

Britten's trip to the Far East in the mid-Fifties provided him with a creative impetus that lasted through the rest of his life. His contact with the Balinese gamelan bore the most immediate fruit, initially in the ballet, The Prince of the Pagodas, then through the Fairy music of the Dream, passages like the Sanctus in War Requiem and finally the gamelan group that characterise Tadziu in Death in Venice.

The results of the Japanese leg of the trip - and the particular passion Britten acquired there for Noh drama - took longer to percolate through his creative processes. It achieved its full flowering in the 3 Church Parables he wrote in the mid-60's, of which Curlew River was the first. These are spare pieces with instrumental ensembles even smaller than were used in his Chamber operas. Each is framed by a processional/recessional plainchant (like the Ceremony of Carols) but which here provides the thematic material for the entire work.

Perhaps it was Britten's newly discovered sparseness of texture, instrumentation and material, perhaps it was the effect of Colin Graham's highly ritualised and minimal original stage production, perhaps it was just the newness and the unfamiliarity of the idiom, but the original recording under the composer's direction has always struck me as a bit inhibited. I know there are Brechtian, post-modern forces at work here. The actors/singers play medieval monks playing characters in a Japanese play (Sumidagawa) transferred to the Suffolk Fens. Nevertheless, Britten was a natural dramatist and certainly couldn't restrain that side of his creative nature in his writing, even if he felt compelled to in its performance.

This view is amply demonstrated on Marriner's disc with members of his Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and an outstanding group of singing actors. Thomas Allen's blustering Ferryman, Simon Keenlyside's world-weary Traveller and, above all, Philip Langridge's tragic and heart-breaking Madwoman breathe real humanity into their characters and real drama into their interactions. They are abetted in this by their instrumental counterparts - the French Horn with the Ferryman, the Double-bass with the Traveller and, especially, the flute with the Madwoman. Each of these instrumentalists is fully alive to the drama of his solos. So, too, the percussionist who has a very important role in this piece, often pre-empting, working in canon with or following a singer's phrase on the tuned drums, for example. And even this tiny ensemble can still produce the magical Britten sound pictures - whether it's the disorienting oriental, syncopated treatment of the plainsong theme (Te lucis ante terminum) for the robing interlude or the wonderful evocation of a watery river-crossing, and all done with such minimal means. The climax, when the ghost of the Madwoman's son rises from his grave to console her, is all the more moving for the humanity that has already been invested in the characters.

The composer gives his soloists, both vocal and instrumental, a lot of freedom in this score. So the conductor's role is a little more ambivalent than in most operas. His main role is to keep the often rhythmically diverse lines of the ensemble together. In fact, Britten introduced a new piece of notation into this work and aptly named it 'The Curlew' (it looks like a bird in flight). This was to allow parts in different tempi or bar lengths to catch up with each other and re-synchronise. Having said that, Neville Marriner does everything required of him and throughout everyone always seems to achieve just the right tempi to allow the drama to unfold at its own steady pace.

The recording is clear, precise and realistic. There's lots of body to the horn, depth to the double-bass, breathy clarity to the flute and, at the boy's appearance, the temple-bells ring out as clear as a...well, a bell! All in all, for its extra dramatic truth and for the excellent performances of all the singers and players, I'd say that this recording actually supersedes the composer's own - and there's not many Britten operas of which that's true.  From Amazon.com Custmer review