NMC is celebrating twenty years of recordings this year and has been described as ‘Britain’s most important producer of interesting new or recent and neglected works from this country’ by The Sunday Times. This month NMC releases an intriguing disc of Britten rarities that includes realisations of fragments of unfinished manuscript by composer and associate of Britten, Colin Matthews. The first work on disc, Les Illuminations, is not a rarity in itself; however, included here is the first recording of three songs that were originally discarded from the cycle. Titled Phrase, Aube and À une raison they have been orchestrated by Matthews and are presented as an add-on. French soprano Sandrine Piau has a voice very much suited to the precise nature of Britten’s score and the ‘new’ songs blend well (hardly suprisingly) with the rest of the cycle. Following this are several smaller fragments of works including In memoriam Dennis Brain (with whom Britten had a close association). But the work I was most curious about is the Movements for a Clarinet Concerto, here performed by the brilliant Michael Collins. It was Benny Goodman who commissioned the work that Britten began sketching in 1942, just before he left the US to return to Britain. His manuscript (by that point a complete first movement) was seized by US customs as suspicions were aroused by the musical notation (which was thought to be a sophisticated kind of code!). The missing papers meant that by the time they were reunited with their owner the project had been sidelined; work on Peter Grimes and other compositions had became more important. Matthews has ingeniously lifted the material for the second and third movements from other works and sketches and created a valuable work that exploits the clarinet and orchestra superbly. Collins’ performance (taken from a live recording of the first performance last year) is nothing short of his usual brilliance. I’d give my right arm to know what Britten thought of such a project, and cannot help but think he’d be more than impressed by the results.


Reviewed by Dawn Cooke