Britten: Violin Concerto, Chamber Works

Benjamin Britten is known above all as one of the 20th century’s leading opera composers, but his colourful and exciting orchestral works are increasingly regaining their place both in concert halls and in new recordings. German violinist Isabelle Faust neatly ticks both boxes with this, her first entirely “live” concerto recording. “Britten’s Violin Concerto is a really unusual work that’s not often performed outside England,” Faust tells Apple Music Classical. “For me, recording it became a matter of urgency.” Joining Faust are the conductor Jakub Hrůša and the superb Symphony Orchestra of Bayerische Rundfunk (Bavarian Radio). “I’ve known Jakub for a very long time,” says Faust. “I was quite close to his teacher and mentor Jiří Bělohlávek when Jakub was acting as his assistant. But it’s only recently Jakub and I have been playing in concert, each time with different repertoire and each time it was just absolutely fabulous. So I thought it would be just wonderful to work together on an album.” That Faust plays the Britten Concerto with an intense passion is not just a matter of close identification, as she explains: “I always try to find the specific musical language for whatever composer I deal with.” Yet finding Britten’s style, particularly in such a watershed work as his Concerto, was not so easy: “Britten writes in very different kinds of styles,” says Faust. “The Violin Concerto is also the start of a different period in his compositional life: it brings in a new, very serious and very deep way of writing music. And I feel that Britten’s violin concerto is a very desperate piece, which of course, influences how you play it.” Written for the Catalan violinist Antonio Brosa, Britten’s Concerto was composed in the shadow of the Spanish Civil War—hence the bitter anguish which tempers its songful style. While Faust recognizes that the work has something of the sarcasm of Britten’s earlier style—“It reminds me a lot of Shostakovich’s music”—she identifies a new and profound influence from Berg’s hauntingly grieving Violin Concerto. “Britten had just heard its first performance two years before in Barcelona, and he was deeply, deeply shocked by this piece. Berg’s Concerto ends with the Bach chorale, ‘Es ist genug,’ and somehow the work ends rising heavenwards. While I don’t want to draw too close a parallel, I think Britten’s use of a passacaglia (a Bach-style ground bass) in the finale of his Concerto serves a similar function. Most of his piece is really very heavy, deep and dark, but with a sense that it does not want to be in this dark place.” Total contrast is offered by the rest of Faust’s programme, largely featuring pieces Britten wrote for Brosa before his Violin Concerto. First Reveille, composed in 1937, is a humorous portrait of the violinist who was never an early riser—you can almost see Brosa stretching and yawning in the opening page of the piece—but also a vehicle for trying out some virtuoso techniques later used in the Concerto. Faust senses that Britten wrote to Brosa’s very specific strengths: “there is a lot of double-stop harmonics, which is really something that doesn't come easily to most violinists. But apparently, Brosa must have loved those, otherwise he wouldn't have let them go through. And there are other very, very specific technical difficulties, which you don't find in other concertos—even ones that are technically difficult.” Then comes the Suite for violin and piano, composed in the previous year. Faust describes this as a “playful” work which, after its short introduction, proceeds with “four very different storytelling movements.” It was absolutely new for both Faust and her pianist Alexander Melnikov. As Faust relates, both were delighted by its “absolutely gorgeous ‘Lullaby’—it’s just a perfect little movement.” Finally, as “a kind of encore,” a real rarity in the form of Two Pieces for violin, viola, and piano by the 16-year-old Britten. Composed in 1929, their advanced modernist style recalls the esoteric world of late Scriabin as well as Schoenberg. The part for viola (Britten’s own instrument) was a perfect excuse for Isabelle to involve her brother, Boris, the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal viola player. One could hardly imagine a finer lineup to present the best case for these prodigious pieces.