VISIONS OF ENGLAND Symphony Hall, Birmingham Wednesday 9 June 2021, 2.00pm & 6.30pm Michael Seal – Conductor Ian Bostridge – Tenor Britten Nocturne 27’ Arnold Symphony No.5 31’ OUR CAMPAIGN FOR MUSICAL LIFE IN THE WEST MIDLANDS England’s dreaming… Benjamin Britten loved poetry, and his These socially-distanced concerts have Nocturne summons the magic of a summer night to weave something been made possible by funding from Arts wondrously rich and strange. No one alive sings this music better Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund, than Ian Bostridge – a tenor who charges everything he performs with plus generous support from thousands of drama – and it’s merely the prelude to the soaring melodies, gleaming individuals, charitable trusts and companies colours and raw, heart-on-sleeve emotion of Malcolm Arnold’s through The Sound of the Future fundraising magnificent Fifth Symphony. An online poll recently voted it one of campaign. the greatest of all British symphonies, but the best way to judge is to hear it for yourself – performed live by the CBSO and with Micheal Seal, By supporting our campaign, you will play your part in helping the orchestra to recover a conductor who believes in it, heart and soul. Join us, and discover a from the pandemic as well as renewing the masterpiece by a composer born 100 years ago. way we work in our second century. Plus, all new memberships are currently being matched pound for pound by a generous You are welcome to view the online programme on your mobile device, but please ensure that your member of the CBSO’s campaign board. sound is turned off and that you are mindful of other members of the audience. Any noise (such as whispering) can be very distracting – the acoustics of the Hall will highlight any such sound. If you use a Support your CBSO at cbso.co.uk/future hearing aid in conjunction with our infra-red hearing enhancement system, please make sure you have collected a receiver unit and that your hearing aid is switched to the ‘T’ position, with the volume level appropriately adjusted. Audiences are welcome to take photographs before and after the concert, and during breaks in the music for applause. If you would like to take photos at these points please ensure you do not use a flash, and avoid disturbing other members of the audience around you. Please note that taking photographs or filming the concert while the orchestra is playing is not permitted as it is distracting both for other audience members and for the musicians on stage. Keeping you safe: Please ensure that you are following all of the covid-safe measures that are in place, including: arriving at the time indicated on your ticket, wearing a face covering whilst in the building (exemption excluded), keeping a social distance from other audience members and staff, following facebook.com/thecbso signage and/or guidance from staff, and using the hand sanitising stations provided. Thank you. twitter.com/thecbso instagram.com/thecbso Supported by Supported by 1 Benjamin Britten (1913-76) Coleridge left only the opening lines of a poem entitled The Wanderings of Cain with its lithe, graceful images of the ‘lovely Boy Nocturne for tenor solo, seven … plucking fruit’. These are realised in a slow, delicate waltz, the harp’s roulades derived from the tenor’s melody. With the lilt of obbligato instruments and the ritornello never far away, Britten exploits the onomatopoeic possibilities of the excerpt from Middleton’s Blurt, Master strings, Op.60 Constable. Voice and horn vividly evoke the sights and sounds of the poetry: the midnight bell, dogs howling, crickets hopping, and the mewing of cats. On a poet’s lips I slept – Very slow and soft Below the thunders of the upper deep – Majestic The Wordsworth text comes from Book X of The Prelude. With an undercurrent of menacing timpani, this is the world of broken Encinctured with a twine of leaves – Slow waltz sleep, nightmarish fantasies and the fear of irrational, unstoppable Midnight’s bell goes ting, ting, ting – Very slow and soft forces. Significantly for a text dwelling on the horrors of the French But that night when on my bed I lay – Steady march Revolution and the September massacres, there is no hint of the She sleeps on soft, last breaths – Slow and regular soothing ritornello anywhere; instead at the climax the tenor launches into an anarchical march, the beating hooves of the What is more gentle than a wind in summer? – Quick horse reminiscent of Tarquinius’ ride in Britten’s opera The Rape When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see – Slow of Lucretia. In Owen’s The Kind Ghosts, the ‘she’ of the poem is a symbol for Britten commented that he found dreams ‘strange and remote’; in Britannia, who complacently accepts the doom of her young men Nocturne he explored them through an anthology of poems for supposed succour of the nation. The cor anglais’ melancholic evoking their differing manifestations, be they fantastical or threnody weaves its way against hollow emotionless pizzicato nightmarish, or self-revelatory, or consoling. Scored for tenor solo, chords. For the opening lines of Keats’ Sleep and Poetry, the seven obbligato instruments, and strings, Nocturne was strings are silent, leaving the filigree decorations of flute and commissioned for the Leeds Centennial Festival of 1958 and clarinet to accompany the tenor’s mellifluous, airy melody. received its premiere on 16 October that year, performed by Peter Magically the strings suddenly reappear on the word ‘sleep’ with a Pears and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rudolf crystal-clear C major chord. As the ritornello returns, the tenor’s Schwarz. The dedicatee was Alma Mahler. melisma heard from the Shelley setting returns, then all the obbligato instruments quietly outline a major third on D flat to The music is continuous and the texts not always self-contained, ravishing effect. as several times Britten chose excerpts from longer poems. Binding the setting is a string ritornello (recurring passage) whose Britten leaves his most powerful setting, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43, lulling character suggests not only slipping into slumber, but also with its affirmation of human love, until last. Against the richness the wakeful moments when dreams drift one into another. The provided by all the obbligato instruments, the string writing tenor’s melodic line is often like an arioso, and tonally the music is becomes impassioned and the wide, expressive melodic line in a state of flux between C and D flat major; Britten handles the overtly Mahlerian. As the tenor finally finds ‘heavy sleep’, the tension between them in consummate fashion. ritornello fades; C major and D flat major are fused as the poet is entwined with the beloved in dreams. Over the omnipresent ritornello, the tenor sings lines from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Britten described to his friend Programme note © Andrew Burn Donald Mitchell the importance he attached to dreams in the creative process and this is reflected here by the choice of text. At the words ‘nurseings of immortality’, the soloist has a rapt melismatic phrase that becomes a significant motif in the work. The first obbligato instrument to be heard is the bassoon, its writhing melodic line vividly portraying the fearful monster of the deep, the Kraken, described in Tennyson’s eponymous poem. Over a ground bass, the strings punctuate the words with disjointed pizzicato and sinister trills. The final image of the Kraken dying on the surface of the ocean is eerily evoked by the bassoon playing in its highest register. 2 1. On a poet’s lips I slept 4. Midnight’s bell goes ting, ting, ting On a poet’s lips I slept Midnight’s bell goes ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, Dreaming like a love-adept Then dogs do howl, and not a bird does sing In the sound his breathing kept; But the nightingale, and she cries twit, twit, twit; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, Owls then on every bough do sit; But feeds on the aëreal kisses Ravens croak on chimneys’ tops; Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses. The cricket in the chamber hops; He will watch from dawn to gloom The nibbling mouse is not asleep, The lake-reflected sun illume But he goes peep, peep, peep, peep, peep; The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, And the cats cry mew, mew, mew, Nor heed nor see, what things they be; And still the cats cry mew, mew, mew. But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, From ‘Blurt, Master Constable’ by Thomas Middleton Nurslings of immortality! From ‘Prometheus Unbound’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley 5. But that night when on my bed I lay But that night When on my bed I lay, I was most mov’d 2. Below the thunders of the upper deep And felt most deeply in what world I was; Below the thunders of the upper deep; With unextinguish’d taper I kept watch, Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, Reading at intervals; the fear gone by His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep Press’d on me almost like a fear to come; The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee I thought of those September Massacres, About his shadowy sides: above him swell Divided from me by a little month, Huge sponges of millenial growth and height; And felt and touch’d them, a substantial dread: And far away into the sickly light, The rest was conjured up from tragic fictions, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell And mournful Calendars of true history, Unnumber’d and enormous polypi Remembrances and dim admonishments.