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Review: No one excelled Britten in vocal settings. Handel and G&S equaled him but that’s it. The Hymn to St. Cecilia was a fairly early piece that showed just that. It is a work of such charm that a single hearing is insufficient to expose its beauties. The Part Songs – brief though they are glisten in the sun of their composer. Minor works of the composer? May be. But of major enjoyment. There is no biography of the RIAS chorus appended to the excellent notes by Michael Kennedy. How many readers even known that RIAS stands for Radio in the American Sector and harks back to the late forties when Berlin – indeed all of Germany were divided into the American, English and Russian Sectors with a snippet for the French and was known as Tri-Zonia – as we old Berlin hands called it. As to the singling: The voices are fresh enough but the recording has two major faults that may make you look elsewhere for the same music. In the first place they are too distantly miked and that may lead to the second fault that not one word in ten can be understood. And that especially in Britten is serious. Complete texts.
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Britten: Sacred and Profane
