Benjamin Britten; Colin McPhee - The Prince of the Pagodas; Tabuh-Tabuhan (Leonard Slatkin)

Information

Composer: Benjamin Britten; Colin McPhee

• (01-03) Balinese Ceremonial Music (arr. Colin McPhee)
• (04-06) McPhee - Tabuh-Tabuhan, toccata for orchestra and two piano
• (07-27) Britten - Suite from the Ballet 'The Prince of the Pagodas', Op. 57

Benjamin Britten & Colin McPhee, pianos (1-3)
Elizabeth Burley & John Alley, pianos (4-6)
BBC Symphony Orchestra (4-27)
Leonard Slatkin, conductor (4-27)

Date: 1941 (1-3), 2001
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010111

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Review

Classy performances of music inspired by the Balinese gamelan tradition

It was in 1939 that Benjamin Britten first met the Canadian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee (1900-64). Having recently returned from a six-year sojourn on the island of Bali, McPhee would no doubt have enthused to his younger colleague about that island’s indigenous gamelan music (of which he was by then a noted authority and pioneering champion). McPhee’s best-known achievement remains his ‘Toccata for Orchestra and Two Pianos’ Tabuh-tabuhan, written in Mexico City in 1936 and premièred that same year under Carlos Chávez. East meets West in this beguiling creation, and Slatkin masterminds a poised account that makes the music sound more than ever like a template for minimalism. It’s preceded here by a 1941 recording of McPhee and Britten performing the former’s Balinese Ceremonial Music for two pianos. 

In Janaury 1956, Britten travelled to Bali. He, too, was bowled over by the island’s ‘remarkable culture’ and especially its gamelan tradition, which in turn spurred him to complete his ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (a Sadler’s Wells commission with which he had become rather bogged down). Anyone not willing to go the whole hog and invest in Oliver Knussen’s dazzling set of the complete score (Virgin, 7/90) would do well to lend an ear to this Chandos newcomer which gives us an effective sequence devised in 1997 by Donald Mitchell and Mervyn Cooke. Lasting 51 minutes, it is cast in six parts, the fourth of which includes a generous helping of the gamelan-inspired material for ‘Pagoda-Land’ missing from the composer-approved concert suite assembled by Norman Del Mar in 1963. Slatkin directs as if to the manner born and the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s stylish, bright-eyed contribution is captured with thrilling realism by the Chandos engineers (the SACD equivalent should be worth seeking out by audiophiles). Altogether, a most enjoyable issue.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Jan04/Britten_McPhee.htm
https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Pagodas-Suite-Tabuh-Tabuhan-Britten/dp/B0000C83YL

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Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. Britten's other works range from orchestral to choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental as well as film music. Britten was also a celebrated pianist and conductor, performing many of his own works in concert and on record.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Britten

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Leonard Slatkin (born September 1, 1944 in Los Angeles) is an American conductor and composer. Slatkin attended the Juilliard School where he studied conducting under Jean Morel. He also studied with Walter Susskind at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Slatkin worked as principal conductor and music director of the St. Louis Symphony, National Symphony, BBC Symphony and Orchestre National de Lyon, as well as principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic and Pittsburg Symphony. He has been the music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra since 2007.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Slatkin

http://www.leonardslatkin.com/

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