Is Peter Grimes a self-portrait by Benjamin Britten? Ever since his death in 1976, it has been customary to categorise Britten, like the character of Grimes, as an outsider in society. If there is one thing the composer's centenary has taught us, a lesson brought powerfully into focus by the Southbank Centre's Britten weekend, it is that you can no more pigeonhole Britten than you can restrict Grimes to the role of heroic misfit. We could see and hear, in Stuart Skelton's magnificent interpretation, that Grimes also has a visionary, childlike, "Moral" side - just as Britten the idealist was simultaneously Britten the conformist and Britten the two-faced machinator. The diversity of Britten's creative character was further underlined by a concert of his 1930s film scores - an Aldeburgh Music production marrying nine short documentaries to performances by the Aurora Orchestra under the baton of Nicholas Collon.
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a35a6542-2b68-11e3-bfe2-00144feab7de.html?ftcamp=published_links%252Frss%252Flife-arts_music%252Ffeed%252F%252Fproduct
No comments:
Post a Comment