

SIGCD122
Release Date: May 2008
Originally recorded in 2008
Benjamin Britten
Susan Gritton
Mark Padmore
Iain Burnside
The Warehouse, London
John H. West
Mike Hatch
Vocal & Song
Piano
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BENJAMIN BRITTEN
(1913-1976)Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22
The Poet's Echo, Op. 76
Four French Folksong Arrangements
Um Mitternacht (1960)
Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, Op. 61
Four French Folksong Arrangements
Notes
Britten possessed an extraordinary skill and fluency in setting his native language to music and this has sometimes obscured his flair for setting foreign poetry; some of his very finest vocal works involve German, Latin, Italian or Russian texts.
Susan Gritton and Mark Padmore perform these songs with vigour, marvellously accompanied by Iain Burnside, and do great justice to songs which many would regard as being the most distinctive and very finest examples of Britten’s art.
‘The Pushkin settings of The Poet’s Echo (1965) demand dramatic, intense colours, and the soprano Susan Gritton duly supplies them… Throughout, the pianist Iain Burnside traverses this vast, impressive terrain with stylish ease.’
The Sunday Times

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Reviews
Andrew Stewart
John France
Performance ***** - Recording *****
"What an inspired idea not only to bring together Britten’s mature foreign language songs, but also to have the programme shared by two of Britain’s keenest and brightest singers. I had a few very small reservations to begin with over Mark Padmore’s artfulness and occasional small linguistic slip in the Michelangelo Sonnets; once heard, Anthony Rolfe Johnson’s delivery of Sonnet 30 can never be forgotten, and he manages the climatic phrase with its flip over to a top B without having to adjust the text as Padmore does. Susan Gritton, too, projects the Russian text of the Pushkin settings less urgently than their original interpreter Galina Vishnevskaya, but captures something of the Russian soprano’s most luminous, hallowed tone and remains purer under pressure.
The second half of the recital, though, is flawless music-making of the first order. Britten’s French folksong settings, like his Tom Moore Irish sequence, tend to be overshadowed by the English songs, but the piano parts, delicately rendered by Iain Burnside if without quite Britten the pianist’s ethereal light, are full of unselfconscious individuality. Gritton and Burnside share the honours here, and it’s impossible to choose between the Christmas song and ’Il est quelqu’un sur terre’ for seemingly artless simplicity. The Hölderlin settings, prefaced by a rare Goethe number first performed in 1992, are Britten at his most essential, and Gritton makes the best possible case for a soprano interpretation. So delight and spiritual depths go hand in hand. The recital is vividly recorded, the voices well forward though, not at the expense of the piano part, and handsomely presented, with an informative essay by John Evans."
David Nice
Andrew Clements
Rick Jones
Michael Kennedy
With the ever-inventive Iain Burnside at the piano, revelling in Britten’s keyboard felicities, the vocal honours are shared evenly by soprano and tenor. Mark Padmore is commanding in the Italianate, almost bel canto style of the Michelangelo sonnets, and Susan Gritton’s rich-hued timbre and linguistic mastery reap rewards in the Russian and German cycles."
Matthew Rye
Stephen Pettitt
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