In 2013 we will celebrate the centenary of Benjamin Britten - arguably the most renowned British composer of the 20th century. The British composer, pianist and conductor was born in Lowestoft on the North Sea coast of England in 1913. He passed away only 63 years later but managed to produce a vast number of musical pieces ranging from opera to film music.
Britten’s contribution to the opera, orchestral, chamber music and vocal repertoire is inestimable, and the works he wrote for performance by children and young people have introduced many generations to the joys of music. He was responsible for the founding of the Aldeburgh International Festival which to this day combines performances of the highest international quality with events involving the local community; and with his partner Peter Pears, he founded the Britten-Pears School which works year round training the composers and artists of the future.
Britten was a progressive cultural figure too, ahead of his time on issues including pacifism, homosexuality and the role of artists in their communities.
In the UK and elsewhere across the world the centenary will be celebrated with concerts, exhibitions, lectures and much more. At the Britten 100 website you can find all the information you need about events, the life of Britten, and listen to samples of his music.
Admission is free of charge (except The Habit of Art)
Tony Palmer is closely associated with Britten having made several acclaimed documentaries about his life and work. A Time There Was is the first of Palmer’s profiles of the composer’s life and work, made a couple of years after the composer's death, and is a moving survey which combines interviews, rehearsal footage and fully-staged scenes from such operas as Peter Grimes.
A complex collage of images of war, Jarman's cinematic interpretation of Britten's famous oratorio has as its soundtrack the composer's 1963 recording of the work featuring the Russian, English and German soloists (Galina Vishnevskaya, Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) for whom it was written. Britten composed his War Requiem for the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1963, after the original was destroyed during the war. Derek Jarman's critically acclaimed film evokes the original recording of Britten's choral masterpiece which blended the Latin Mass of the Dead with the poetry of British First World War poet, Wilfred Owen. Its narrative is told through the Old Soldier (Laurence Olivier in his last on-screen role) and his nurse (Tilda Swinton), interwoven with symbolic, cinematic images and archive footage which recreate the horrors of 20th century warfare.
This collection of shorts brings together five films from the G.P.O. that highlight Britten’s social and political concerns and love of the British landscape. The programme also represents one of the most fruitful partnerships at the G.P.O Unit - between Britten and poet W.H. Auden.
Way to the Sea (J.B. Holmes, 1936, 9 minutes)
The London to Portsmouth railway line and its recent electrification, prefaced with an historical representation of Portsmouth. Music by Benjamin Britten; Commentary by W.H. Auden.
Coal Face (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935, 12 minutes)
The work of the British miner and his significance to British industry. Alongside the fairly conventional narrative on the structure of the coal industry, the film also uses sound, language, music and choral singing in dramatic fashion, and includes a critical social commentary. Music by Benjamin Britten; Verse by W.H. Auden.
The Tocher (Lotte Reiniger, 1938, 5 minutes)
A film ballet and fairy tale about a man who wins his true love with the help of the "wee folk"...and the latest Post Office initiative. Adapted from a Scottish folk tale in which young lovers Angus and Rhona are separated by her father as Angus is too poor to afford a dowry (or 'tocher' in Gaelic). The sequence in which Angus encounters “wee folk” by the side of a lake and Britten’s dialogue-free choral score (adapted from themes by Rossini) creates a beautiful and haunting piece. Music arranger Benjamin Britten.
The King’s Stamp (William Coldstream, 1935, 20 minutes)
The design and production of a postage stamp for the Jubilee celebrations of King George V. The film is in three parts; the first shows Barnett Freedman sketching designs at his London home. The second shows how Freedman's designs become modern stamps, contrasted with staid Victorian attitudes to the introduction of a democratic ‘penny post’. The third part details the rise of stamp collecting; the climax being stills from King George V's own stamp collection. Produced by Alberto Cavalcanti (uncredited); music by Benjamin Britten.
Night Mail (Harry Watt & Basil Wright, 1936, 25 minutes)
A visual poem charting a postal train’s journey from London to Scotland. One of the most critically acclaimed of all British documentaries, the film begins with a voiceover describing how the mail is collected for transit. As the train proceeds on its journey, we are shown the various regional railway stations at which it collects and deposits.
Tickets €10 (concessions: €8))
Directed by Nicholas Hytner; starring Richard Griffiths and Alex Jennings, Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W. H. Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.
Britten’s most famous and most performed opera Peter Grimes is directed for cinema in this stunning new film by Margaret Williams. It was filmed in June 2013 during three extraordinary performances presented during the Aldeburgh Festival, in the heart of the town that inspired it. Based on George Crabbe’s 1810 poem The Borough, Britten’s powerful and masterful evocation of the North Sea in all its moods has become inextricably linked with the Aldeburgh that was home to Crabbe in the late eighteenth century and Britten in the twentieth, and where both poem and opera were written. The performances of Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach were directed by Tim Albery who placed the audience on the beach watching the story unfold as dusk fades over the sea. As cast and audience are engulfed by darkness and the thunder of the sea, the connection between the world of Peter Grimes and the local community that branded him a murderer and hunted him down, is tangible. The excellent cast and chorus, including Alan Oke in the eponymous role of Peter Grimes and Giselle Allan as Ellen Orford, sing live with amplification, while the Britten-Pears Orchestra under the baton of Britten expert Steuart Bedford is pre-recorded.
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