Britten: Music for Oboe; Piano Music

Featuring

Sarah Francis
Galina Solodchin
John Underwood
Jonathan Williams
Michael Dussek
Delmé Quartet

Benjamin Britten

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Composer Biography

Benjamin Britten, a British composer, worked for the GPO Film Unit and the Group and Left Theatres in London before moving to America in 1939.

Composer Biography

Britten himself selected and published Five Waltzes in 1970 from a large number of short piano pieces he had written between 1923 and 1925.

Critical Reception

The Phantasy Quartet brought Britten his first international success in April 1934 when it was performed at the International Society of Contemporary Music in Florence.

Composition History

Britten's Phantasy Quartet, despite its youthful expression, is considered important and followed closely after his Opus 1, the Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra.

Compositional Technique

The Phantasy Quartet is constructed in arch form and suggests Britten had absorbed the idea of sonata-cycle compression found in Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony.

Composition History

Britten's Six Metamorphoses after Ovid were written for oboist Joy Boughton and premiered at the Fourth Aldeburgh Festival in 1951.

Notable Performances

The Phantasy Quartet, dedicated to oboist Leon Goossens, was first broadcast by the BBC in August 1933 and had its London concert premiere in November 1933.