Britten: Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings
Benjamin Britten's music of the early 1940s was dominated by Peter Grimes, but there were other substantial pieces from this period too. The most important is Serenade, the setting of six English poems for tenor, solo horn and string orchestra that he completed in 1943.
It was the first large-scale work he had written specifically for Peter Pears, and it was also a response to the extraordinary artistry of the horn player Dennis Brain. The solo horn opens the work, adds perfectly imagined atmosphere to the songs, and then, in Pears's words, "winds the work into stillness".
Pears's own recordings are the benchmark. There are two available on CD - the earlier, recorded in 1944 with the Boyd Neel String Orchestra conducted by Britten (Pearl), also has Brain as soloist: his playing is little short of miraculous. Pears's voice is fresher than in the studio version with Barry Tuckwell and the London Symphony Orchestra, again under Britten, made 20 years later (Decca), but the later recording is superior.
Anyone not allergic to Pears's very English timbre need look no further than that Decca CD. For those who are, there is plenty of choice, for almost every subsequent English lyric tenor has recorded the work, not to mention distinguished overseas competitors such as Peter Schreier (Campion), Christoph Pregardien (BIS) and Jerry Hadley (Nimbus).
Ian Bostridge will surely supersede his own version with Ingo Metzmacher and the Bamberg Symphony (EMI), while John Mark Ainsley, with the splendid horn player David Pyatt, needs better orchestral playing than that provided by the Britten Sinfonia under Nicholas Cleobury (EMI Eminence).
But Robert Tear provides a 1988 interpretation with the Chicago Symphony under Giulini that combines Pears's close attention to every morsel of the text with a firmer, more even tone. It is perhaps the best all-round choice.
· Key Recording: Tear (Deutsche Grammophon)
