Britten: Works for Voice & Guitar

Featuring

Ivonne Fuchs
Georg Gulyás
Benjamin Britten
John Dowland

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Compositional Technique

Britten's Nocturnal Op. 70, a guitar piece, is an inverted series of variations based on John Dowland's song 'Come heavy Sleep', where the theme is not presented until the very end.

Performer Biography

Georg Gulyás, the guitarist on this album, won the Best Instrumental Music award at the 2006 Audiophile Recordings Awards in Hong Kong for his CD 'Albéniz, Ponce, Tárrega'.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Benjamin Britten's music often uses simple tonal means to depict tortured souls, a characteristic shared with John Dowland, a Renaissance composer whose music Britten frequently used as a starting point.

Composition History

Britten's 'Songs from the Chinese', for voice and guitar, was composed after his travels in the Far East in 1957 and sets Chinese poetry translated by Arthur Waley.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Britten's arrangements of folksongs, such as those in 'Folksong Arrangements, vol. 6, 'England'', are sparse, designed to enhance the songs' character without intruding on them.

Performer Biography

Ivonne Fuchs, the German mezzo-soprano, made her international debut in 2010 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and Staatsoper in Berlin, performing Waltraute in Wagner's Die Walküre under Daniel Barenboim.

Performer Biography

Georg Gulyás, the guitarist, studied at the Juilliard School in New York and the Malmö Academy of Music, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Guitar at Karlstad University.