Benjamin Britten

Britten's Irish Reel was composed in 1936 as title music for a documentary film made by Marion Grierson and Evelyn Spice. Around the Village Green was made for the Travel and Industrial Development As...

Concert version of the radio drama The Rescue (1943) prepared by Christopher de Souza in association with Donald Mitchell and Colin Matthews, Instrumentation: 2(II=picc).2.2(II=bcl).asax.2 - 4331 - ti...

Britten's setting of Edith Sitwell's poem 'Praise We Great Men', was left unfinished at his death. It was being written for Mstislav Rostrpovich to include in his first season with the National Sympho...

Britten's last opera, Death In Venice , is based on the short story by Thomas Mann. It follows the inner turmoil of the ageing novelist Gustav von Aschenbach, who becomes infatuated by a boy he sees o...

Vocal score to Benjamin Britten's The Rescue of Penleope , for narrator, four solo voices and orchestra. The concert version of the radio drama The Rescue (1943) prepared by Christopher de Souza i...

Love from a Stranger was a 'thriller' starring Ann Harding and Basil Rathbone, based on an Agatha Christie short story, Philomel Cottage. As well as Britten's score, the film also included excerpts fr...

Britten was so remarkably prolific as a young composer that many of the works from his teens were put aside to await revision or completion as he rushed on to the next piece. This was particularly the...

The first broadcast of the incidental music for D. G. Bridson's radio drama, King Arthur was given on 23rd April (St. George's Day) 1937. The first performance of this Suite for Orchestra was given on...

This concert version has been prepared by Donald Mitchell for Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone soloists, 1 or 2 speakers, SATB choir and Orchestra. The text has been compiled by R. Ellis Roberts. Th...

In preparing for publication the 1935 orchestral version of Britten's Te Deum in C, it became clear that there were a number of discrepancies between the manuscript and the original 193 vocal score. S...

Benjamin Britten wrote his 'String Quartet in F' in April 1928, shortly after he began lessons with Frank Bridge. He was fourteen at the time and it is thought that this piece was set as a homework ex...

It is hard to believe that Benjamin Britten was 16 when he wrote the Quartettino, such is the skill and intellectual command. Peter Stadlen, The Daily Telegraph, 25 May 1983

Benjamin Britten's last completed composition, 'Welcome Ode' was originally written for school choir and orchestra. The three movements - Jig, Roundel and Canon, here transcribed for strings, form a S...

The sources for this new edition of Britten's String Quartet No.3 was the original manuscript, a photocopy of the manuscript in progress, Rosamund Strode's fair copy. The Quartet was written for the A...

Britten's Two Portraits for strings - the composer himself called them 'Sketches' - were composed in August and September 1930, during the summer holidays preceding the sixteen-year-old composer's fir...

Un délicieux arrangement de ce mouvement en pizzicato de la Simple Symphony de Britten. La section Trio utilise des harmoniques pour reproduire les cordes ouvertes et frottées de l'original.