Britten In America

Elizabeth Watts soprano
Oleg Shebeta-Dragan clarinet
Huw Watkins piano
Zoë Beyers violin / director
Britten Sinfonia

50 years since Britten’s death, Britten Sinfonia present a programme that focuses on the years he spent in North America during WW2. Sensuous music with a bright sheen written in Canada and the USA is paired with music by his ‘very dear friend’ and mentor, Aaron Copland, from the same decade.

Britten Sinfonia are joined by soprano Elizabeth Watts in Les Illuminations, and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Oleg Shebeta-Dragan – multiple prize-winner at the prestigious Carl Nielsen Competition – in Copland’s Clarinet Concerto.

Between April 1939 and April 1942, Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears enjoyed personally and professionally formative years in North America. Much of the dazzling song cycle Les Illuminations – settings of proto-surrealist poetry by Arthur Rimbaud – was composed early in their stay, and the vigorous Young Apollo for piano and strings was a commission by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, premiered in August 1939.

In the winter of 1940-41, Britten and Pears lived in an extraordinary Brooklyn house-share with the poet W.H. Auden, the burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee and composer-novelist Paul Bowles. Alongside many others, including Salvador Dali, Thomas Mann and Kurt Weill, Aaron Copland was a frequent visitor. This programme also includes two of Copland’s greatest works from the 1940s – the ballet Appalachian Spring and the Clarinet Concerto, written for Benny Goodman – and piano works by his student Paul Bowles, who would later become much better known as the author of the novel, The Sheltering Sky.

Britten Young Apollo

Copland Clarinet Concerto

Britten Les Illuminations

Copland Appalachian Spring