Serenade for Tenor Horn & Strings

This is a wonderful record, in substance and execution. As Ian Bostridge writes in his passionately involved program notes, these three song cycles represent a pinnacle of the all-too-sparse literature for tenor and orchestra. We owe them to Britten's long personal and professional partnership with the great tenor Peter Pears, for whom he wrote all his vocal music. Listeners who remember Pears' unique and unmistakable voice and style will be astounded at how thoroughly Bostridge has made these works his own. His voice is very different but no less unique, and intoxicatingly beautiful. He has at his command colors and nuances which he uses so masterfully that they become an integral part of the music, never sounding artificial. Giving equal weight to words and music, Bostridge captures the lush sensuousness of the French cycle, set to poems of Rimbaud, the lyricism, lightness, serenity, horror and triumph of the Serenade, and the declamatory drama of the Nocturne (the last two use poetry from Shakespeare to Wilfred Owen). The cycles trace the development of Britten's style, from the tonal orientation and direct expressiveness of the first, through the greater emotional depth and variety of the second, to the descriptive, sardonic, wild, passionate rhetoric of the third. The orchestra's principals are superb in their extensive solos. Unfortunately, they are nameless except for Radek Baborák, a worthy successor to Dennis Brain, the virtuoso hornist for whom the Serenade was written. --Edith Eisler