Benjamin Britten: "Peter Grimes"
City of London Sinfonia/London Symphony Chorus/Hickox Langridge/Watson/Opie/Williams Chandos, CHAN 9447/8 (2 CDs, 147 mins)
Dial a-track code: 1641
Fifty years after its premiere Peter is as elusive an opera as ever as restlessly ambiguous, in fact, as the tides which ebb and flow through its three acts. In the end, success or failure hinges on the eponymous anti-hero. Is Grimes a complex psychological creation, or a fuzzy conglomeration of half baked buzz phrases outsider, child abuser, dreamer, murderer, visionary? No doubt about the answer as far as this superb recording is concerned the tenor Philip Langridge, whose track record in Britten roles on disc is rapidly approaching awesome proportions, creates a nervy, volatile yet palpably human Peter, marrying the character's alternate outbursts of physical violence and lyrical daydreaming into an absolutely convincing whole.
Conductor Richard Hickox keeps the tension ticking over, playing down the frivolity of the early pub scenes and allowing the build up to the final awful climax of Peter's insanity and death to emerge like a quickening heartbeat from within the score. Janice Watson is a sympathetic Ellen Orford, the smaller roles are well taken and the London Opera Chorus is elegant and versatile but Langridge, memorably, steals the show.
Harrison Birtwistle "Gawain"
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Angel/Howells/Greager/LeRoux/ Tomlinson Collins Classics, 70412 (2 CDs, 136 mins)
Dial-a-track code: 1741
While Peter Grimes reveals the enigmas and eccentricities of rural England, Gawain tackles another sacred cow of English culture, namely the court of King Arthur at Camelot. Despite its uncompromising dissonance and vividly violent staging buckets of blood, by all accounts the piece became a cult hit when first produced in 1991, no easy feat for a full length new opera.
Listening to this set it's easy to see why. The scale of the work is epic, yet the structure intimate enough to convey with potent dramatic force the extremely unheroic dilemma of the eponymous hero, whose confrontation with the Green Knight leads to a quest which delivers, not the heroic deed of his imagination or the bloody death of his nightmares, but a degree of self awareness and an understanding of the principles of compromise which alters him profoundly and not, one fears, for the better. Happy ever after? No chance.
This is very much music as ritual, complete with the cyclical structures and multi layered refrains for which Harrison Birtwistle is well known, so that the work seems to revolve slowly on its axis rather than proceed from A to B. Like the Temple of the Holy Grail in Wagner's Parsifal, Birtwistle's Camelot is an uneasy place, static and decadent beneath its surface glitter, and an easy target for the political manoeuvrings of the witch Morgan Le Fey, who orchestrates the entire action of the opera, grabbing some of the most lyrical lines of David Harsent's staggeringly beautiful libretto in the process.
The young cast is uniformly intelligent in its presentation of this vocally and emotionally demanding music, with Francois Le Roux acquitting himself with dignity as Gawain and the veteran bass baritone John Tomlinson adding an authoritative note as the Green Knight.
George Frederic Handel: "Opera Arias And Overtures, 1704-1726"
Kirkby/Brandenburg Consort/Goodman
Hyperion, CDA66860 (76 mins)
Dial-a-track code: 1681
This column was originally planned oh, yes, planned as a sort of "Best of British" celebration with an eye on Euro `96. One eye, alas, was not enough the championships are long gone, and we're left stranded, offside by a mile. Still, best is best, and they don't come much better than this Emma Kirkby singing early Handel arias in that crystalline, silvery way of hers, the virtuoso singing balanced by a number of elegant overtures. Ideal listening for strawberries and cream summer evenings.
