Britten: Violin Concerto, Chamber Works

Benjamin Britten is known above all as one of the 20th century’s leading opera composers, but his colourful and exciting orchestral works are increasingly regaining their place both in concert halls and in new recordings. German violinist Isabelle Faust neatly ticks both boxes with this, her first entirely “live” concerto recording. “Britten’s Violin Concerto is a really unusual work that’s not often performed outside England,” Faust tells Apple Music Classical. “For me, recording it became a matter of urgency.” Joining Faust are the conductor Jakub Hrůša and the superb Symphony Orchestra of Bayerische Rundfunk (Bavarian Radio). “I’ve known Jakub for a very long time,” says Faust. “I was quite close to his teacher and mentor Jiří Bělohlávek when Jakub was acting as his assistant. But it’s only recently Jakub and I have been playing in concert, each time with different repertoire and each time it was just absolutely fabulous. So I thought it would be just wonderful to work together on an album.” That Faust plays the Britten Concerto with an intense passion is not just a matter of close identification, as she explains: “I always try to find the specific musical language for whatever composer I deal with.” Yet finding Britten’s style, particularly in such a watershed work as his Concerto, was not so easy: “Britten writes in very different kinds of styles,” says Faust. “The Violin Concerto is also the start of a different period in his compositional life: it brings in a new, very serious and very deep way of writing music. And I feel that Britten’s violin concerto is a very desperate piece, which of course, influences how you play it.” Written for the Catalan violinist Antonio Brosa, Britten’s Concerto was composed in the shadow of the Spanish Civil War—hence the bitter anguish which tempers its songful style. While Faust recognises that the work has something of the sarcasm of Britten’s earlier style—“It reminds me a lot of Shostakovich’s music”—she identifies a