BRITTEN DOUBLE CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN & VIOLA VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF FRANK BRIDGE LES ILLUMINATIONS VLADIMIR JUROWSKI conductor SALLY MATTHEWS soprano PIETER SCHOEMAN violin ALEXANDER ZEMTSOV viola LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA BRITTEN DOUBLE CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN & VIOLA VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF FRANK BRIDGE LES ILLUMINATIONS Britten’s first instrument was the piano, so far as we know made no attempt to get which he learned from the age of seven, but the work performed. We do not know why, at ten he began viola lessons and quickly although his experience with rehearsing the became a proficient player. Learning the viola next piece he wrote after the Concerto, his gave him an insider’s knowledge of string Sinfonietta, Op.1, with a student orchestra technique, which is apparent in all the music in August 1932 (‘I have never heard such an he wrote for strings. During his teens, under appalling row!’, he wrote in his diary) may well the influence of his composition teacher have discouraged him. In consequence the Frank Bridge, he wrote several pieces scored Concerto remained in manuscript until 1997, for viola and other instruments, including a when Colin Matthews realised the orchestral remarkable Trio for violin, viola and piano, and score from Britten’s very detailed markings an Elegy for solo viola, the latter the closest in his short score, and the Concerto was he ever came to atonality. When he went to premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival that year. the Royal College of Music in 1930 he reverted to a more tonal musical language, and his The Double Concerto has three movements, music was also soon to acquire the brilliance the last following on directly from the and clarity that characterises his maturity. slow movement. It is scored for a classical orchestra and is sparingly scored throughout, At the Proms in September 1931 Britten which means that the soloists are always heard the Walton Viola Concerto, which he clearly audible. The solo parts are beautifully described in his diary as ‘a work of genius’. contrasted, as in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante The following year he wrote a concerto of which is the work’s only comparable precedent. his own, a Double Concerto for Violin and The first movement is founded on the very Viola: he began composing it on 9 March and, Brittenish horn call heard near the start, astonishingly, had finished sketching the with its prominent rising fourths. These six-minute first movement by the next day; fourths soon get into the solo parts and act the whole piece was composed by 4 May. But as a unifying device. The slow movement, Britten never got beyond a short score, and ‘Rhapsody’, like the middle movement of the Sinfonietta has some relation to the orchestra to perform at the Salzburg Festival English pastoral tradition, though Britten that August. Britten jumped at the chance, is neither nostalgic nor over-indulgent. undaunted by the need for haste, and finished Much of the Allegro scherzando finale is a 25-minute piece in just over a month. underpinned by repeated semiquavers on Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge was his the note B in the timpani (Britten marked first work to become a popular classic. The them to be played with side drum sticks, a reasons are clear: the piece brims over with distinctive sound). The climax, which leads vitality, is full of instantly memorable ideas, us to expect a few loud conclusive chords, and is superbly written for string orchestra. is swept aside by a pianissimo return of the opening horn call, now on solo flute, leading The theme, preceded by an introduction to a magically quiet ending. Altogether, the that highlights the notes F and B, is taken Double Concerto is as musically strong as from Bridge’s Idyll No. 2 for string quartet the Sinfonietta, so it is curious that Britten (1906), which Britten had already used for an abandoned it, and sad that he never heard it. unfinished set of piano variations he began in 1932. The intervals of a falling fifth and After Britten left the Royal Academy, he soon fourth with which it begins are present in became a busy professional composer, writing almost all the variations: these vary widely in film and theatre music and a number of mood, from high-spirited jollity and parody mostly chamber pieces. He met Auden and (as in ‘Aria Italiana’) to the Mahlerian tragedy a close friendship developed between them; of the ‘Funeral March’. The ten variations have they collaborated on several documentary titles indicating their character, and Britten films (notably Night Mail) and on Britten’s also intended them to provide a rounded first major commission, the orchestral song- portrait of his teacher. He originally headed all cycle Our Hunting Fathers. At the end of May the variations with additional titles denoting 1937, Boyd Neel, who conducted Britten’s Bridge’s personal characteristics: thus ‘March’ only feature film score, Love from a Stranger, was headed ‘His energy’, ‘Romanza’ was ‘His asked Britten to compose a piece for his string charm’, ‘Aria Italiana’ was ‘His humour’, and so on. Bridge was greatly touched by the experimenting with homosexuality, Britten score’s dedication of ‘a tribute with affection undoubtedly recognised a kindred spirit. and admiration’, writing in a letter of thanks: This was not the first time he had set French ‘It is one of the few lovely things that has poems: he had written his precocious Quatre ever happened to me.’ The fugal finale was chansons françaises as a 14-year-old schoolboy. originally headed ‘His skill’, but the skill that is Britten scored these two new songs for on spectacular display is Britten’s: his rigorous soprano and string orchestra, specifically for counterpoint lessons with John Ireland at the his friend Sophie Wyss (the original soloist in Royal College had paid off. In the second half, Our Hunting Fathers), who performed them the 11-part fugue combines with Bridge’s in an all-Britten broadcast concert in April, theme plus a series of five more quotations shortly before he and Pears set off for Canada from Bridge’s music, including the opening and their three year exile in America. In Canada theme from his tone poem The Sea that had so Britten and Pears soon became lovers; Britten’s struck Britten when he had heard it as a boy. feelings for Wulff began to fade, and he wrote the remainder of Les Illuminations under The overall mood of the Variations on a Theme the spell of this new relationship. In August of Frank Bridge is of boyish exuberance, but by 1939 the couple moved to Amityville, Long 1939, when Britten began Les Illuminations, Island, to stay with the Mayers, an immigrant he had matured a lot. He had fallen in love German family Pears had befriended on his with the 18-year-old Wulff Scherchen, his earlier visits to the USA. Mrs Mayer soon first serious love affair, and was sharing a became enormously fond of Britten and London flat with his future life partner Peter almost a second mother to him. It was there Pears. In March, with his feelings for Wulff at that Britten completed Les Illuminations. their most intense, Britten set two poems, ‘Being Beauteous, and ‘Marine’, from Arthur On 19 October, just after he had finished Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations, the extraordinary the song-cycle, he wrote to Sophie Wyss: sequence that Rimbaud had written as a ‘Les Illuminations, as I see it, are the visions teenager, mostly in London when he was living of heaven that were allowed the poet, and I out his stormy relationship with Verlaine. hope the composer.’ The visions are very direct. Auden had introduced him to Rimbaud’s The marvellous opening, with its high trill for poetry some months previously, and it greatly cellos and basses and trumpet-like fanfares excited him. In Rimbaud, the provincial boy for violas and violins in B flat and E major, adrift in the city, an archetypal outsider, leading to the soloist’s ‘J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage’ (‘I alone hold the key to this wild parade’), heralds the amazing variety of vivid scenes that follow. The kaleidoscopic dash through the cityscape of ‘Villes’ succeeds to the still, sensuous love poetry of ‘Phrase’ and ‘Antique’ (so much more sensuous when sung by the soprano voice for which the songs were conceived); the brilliance of ‘Royauté’ and ‘Marine’ to the rapt ‘Interlude’ and the loveliest song of all, ‘Being Beauteous’ (now dedicated to Pears), which glides effortlessly in and out of the purest C major. ‘Parade’, which follows, as Britten wrote to Wyss, ‘is a picture of the underworld. It should be made to sound creepy, evil, dirty (apologies!), and really desperate’. Does beauty already inevitably lead ‘to the abyss’, as Death in Venice was later to suggest? And why did he base it on material from his abandoned string quartet ‘Go play, boy, play’, apparently concerned with reminiscences of his schooldays? However, this dark vision ends in the ecstasy of C major again, as the soloist exultantly shouts out the refrain. ‘Départ’ leaves the ‘parade sauvage’ with nostalgic regret, as the music winds down to silence. Almost all the melodic material of Les Illuminations is derived from arpeggios and scalic fragments, the kind of material a Classical composer might have used; yet the music all sounds completely fresh. It is the crowning masterpiece of Britten’s early years. David Matthews 2008 LES Illuminations 1. Fanfare 1. Fanfare J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage.