Canticles Nos. 1-5 / The Heart of the Matter (English Song, Vol. 9)

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At their best, Benjamin Britten's Canticles are hypnotic works that walk a fine line between piety and theater. If they sound studied, they lose their connection to gut emotion, and if they go over the top expressively, Britten's finely woven tapestries of sound give way to chaos. Few recordings have managed to straddle that line as well as this one by Philip Langridge, Steuart Bedford, and a first-rate collection of British collaborators. Langridge's singing shares many qualities with that of Peter Pears, for whom the Canticles were all written: his voice is not always conventionally beautiful, but he sings with clear dramatic intention, crisp diction, and musical precision. The success of this collection rests on Langridge's convincing ability to inhabit a musical world so personally tailored to another singer. For his part, Bedford brings a deep understanding of Britten's compositional language that originated in collaboration with the composer himself. The combination of the two makes this collection preferable to any other on the market, with the exception of the original Britten/Pears recording if you can find it -- and perhaps even then, since the sound quality is so much better. One especially interesting feature of this collection is the inclusion of The Heart of the Matter, a setting of eight Edith Sitwell poems, including Canticle III, "Still Falls the Rain," and featuring four spoken movements, read here capably by Dame Judi Dench. The Heart of the Matter is an obscure treat, and it gives a new context to "Still Falls" for those who only know it as a stand-alone work. Among the Canticles, numbers two and four stand out as particularly successful here; in the second, "Abraham and Isaac," Langridge and contralto Jean Rigby create a more convincing voice of God (both voices singing together, often at close dissonance) than can be heard on any other current recording, and then diverge nicely to flesh out the characters of the faithful father and sacrificial son; in Canticle IV, "Journey of the Magi," Langridge, baritone Gerald Finley, and countertenor Derek Lee Ragin deal very effectively with the awkward prosody and phrasing, lending the work an arresting atmosphere and almost magical strangeness.
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