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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is an adequate account of Britten's great anti-war masterpiece. The singing is, of course, excellent. But the account seems to lack power and intensity as well as being a little episodic. Britten's own incredible account is very much to be preferred as is the careful but powerful (and very well recorded) Hickox.
0 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is simply the finest recording on the market - musically and technically - of this work.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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2 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
well performed Britten choral works
11 Dec 2007
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
I must thank the Rough Guide for I had never heard of the Spring Symphony and they had recommended Gardiner. As the name suggests, the symphony is for soprano, alto and tenor soloitst and for two different choirs and orchestra interpretinng English poems about pastoral scenes and spring. Britten employs his usual acute sense for fitting music and words. The spring symphony sent chills down my spine it is that good. Each member of the team combine under Gardiner. Despite his reputation for Baroque reporoire Gardiner has an affinity for Britten
The hymn to st. celia for unaccompanied choir is much better known. I beieve that gardiner's is the best of the three that I own. This CD also contain five flower songs which are less exciting.
Even though I mainly bought this for the above , the forces also put on a tremendous War Requiem second only to the composer's.
Please buy. The spring symphony should be heard by all clasical lovers.
Please excuse typos, I have a neurologic disease.
The hymn to st. celia for unaccompanied choir is much better known. I beieve that gardiner's is the best of the three that I own. This CD also contain five flower songs which are less exciting.
Even though I mainly bought this for the above , the forces also put on a tremendous War Requiem second only to the composer's.
Please buy. The spring symphony should be heard by all clasical lovers.
Please excuse typos, I have a neurologic disease.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A Feast for Lovers of Benjamin Britten's Music
7 Dec 2010
Format:Audio CD
How this 2 CD recording lies rather hidden in the files of the music of Sir Benjamin Britten is puzzling. The performances of four major works as conducted by the always reliable and impressive John Eliot Gardiner all on two CDs at a very reasonable price should make every Britten lover add this to the collection.
The opening work is the magnificent and far too seldom heard 'Spring Symphony', a work that explores almost every aspect of Britten's personality in composition. It is a demanding work requiring a large orchestra (here the Philharmonia Orchestra), two choirs (the Monteverdi Choir and the Choristers of the Salisbury Cathedral) and four soloists with rather punishing lines. Gardiner finds all the poetry and grace and explosion of Spring in this recording. The soloists - Alison Hagley, Catherine Robbin, John Mark Ainsley - may not be widely known but they carry their demanding parts well, especially Catherine Robbin in the setting of Auden's poem 'Out on the lawn I lie in bed'.
Gardiner makes use of his very fine Monteverdi Choir in the unaccompanied 'Hymn to St. Cecelia' with the small but well-integrated solo voices of Emma Preston-Dunlop, Gill Ross, Penelope Vickers, Peter Mitchell and Richard Savage - a work so refined that it has become a standard in the repertoires of almost every chorus around the world. Gardiner then follows with the Five Flower Songs - lovely but not part of Britten's finest work.
The comes the big work - The War Requiem - and while other conductors may find more general sweep to the huge forces required of this mammoth work, John Eliot Gardiner somehow makes the Requiem more compact and allows the listener to take in the moments of tragic antiwar sentiment the work calls for. Here he conducts the Norddeutscher Rundfunks Sinfonieorchter and Chorus, the Monteverdi Choir, and Der Tölzer Knabenchor with soloists soprano Luba Orgonasova (who sounds very much like Galina Vishnevskaya who created the role written for her), tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson (who sadly died this year) and baritone Bo Skovhus. It is a remarkably fine achievement and one that will make this important work indelible on the psyche. In all this is a splendid album, far too overlooked. Grady Harp, December 10
The opening work is the magnificent and far too seldom heard 'Spring Symphony', a work that explores almost every aspect of Britten's personality in composition. It is a demanding work requiring a large orchestra (here the Philharmonia Orchestra), two choirs (the Monteverdi Choir and the Choristers of the Salisbury Cathedral) and four soloists with rather punishing lines. Gardiner finds all the poetry and grace and explosion of Spring in this recording. The soloists - Alison Hagley, Catherine Robbin, John Mark Ainsley - may not be widely known but they carry their demanding parts well, especially Catherine Robbin in the setting of Auden's poem 'Out on the lawn I lie in bed'.
Gardiner makes use of his very fine Monteverdi Choir in the unaccompanied 'Hymn to St. Cecelia' with the small but well-integrated solo voices of Emma Preston-Dunlop, Gill Ross, Penelope Vickers, Peter Mitchell and Richard Savage - a work so refined that it has become a standard in the repertoires of almost every chorus around the world. Gardiner then follows with the Five Flower Songs - lovely but not part of Britten's finest work.
The comes the big work - The War Requiem - and while other conductors may find more general sweep to the huge forces required of this mammoth work, John Eliot Gardiner somehow makes the Requiem more compact and allows the listener to take in the moments of tragic antiwar sentiment the work calls for. Here he conducts the Norddeutscher Rundfunks Sinfonieorchter and Chorus, the Monteverdi Choir, and Der Tölzer Knabenchor with soloists soprano Luba Orgonasova (who sounds very much like Galina Vishnevskaya who created the role written for her), tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson (who sadly died this year) and baritone Bo Skovhus. It is a remarkably fine achievement and one that will make this important work indelible on the psyche. In all this is a splendid album, far too overlooked. Grady Harp, December 10
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