Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Noye’s Fludde, Op.58
Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge, Op.10
Owen Brannigan (bass), Gladys Parr (contralto), Trevor Anthony (speaker)
English Opera Group/Charles Mackerras  
Boyd Neel String Orchestra/Boyd Neel
First recordings: West Hampstead Studios, London, 14-15 July 1938 (Variations); Aldeburgh Festival, 18 June 1958 (Fludde)
Pristine Audio PACO202 [72]

Given the immeasurably rich archive of Britten recordings from the mid-1950s onwards which emerged from the composer’s exclusive contract with Decca – either conducted, played or recorded under his own supervision – it has become perhaps too easy to overlook the whole raft of earlier recordings of his music on various labels, many of them featuring the original exponents, or various performers later featured on Decca in their earlier and younger days. But the most substantial document on this disc fully deserves the application ‘historical’ – the very first performance of his setting of the Chester miracle play Noye’s Fludde, in a live relay from the Aldeburgh Festival broadcast by the BBC (complete with remarkably curt opening and closing announcements). Although the following year Decca made a recording of the work from live performances at the same venue and with many of the same artists, this world première does give us the opportunity to hear the work when it was completely new and with some singers who were replaced by the following season.

The first thing that has to be observed is that, for such a complicated work (the difficulties of co-ordination between the different professional and amateur forces involved being not the least), the performance is amazingly fine. There are almost no audible fluffs or other errors (although the very final chord is not quite together) and the playing is expertly crafted. Gladys Parr as the morally wayward Mrs Noye may not be quite as characterful as was Sheila Rex the following year, but she certainly makes her mark and draws audible laughter from the audience when she boxes her husband’s ears. Michael Crawford (yes, that same Michael Crawford), his voice just breaking into the tenor register, takes the part of Jaffett with trenchant clarity of diction – Britten modified the written pitches in the score to accommodate him, and one or two lines are transferred elsewhere. Owen Brannigan as Noye is already well established and warmly avuncular in his role, and the young Charles Mackerras demonstrates a superlative ability to marshal his forces into a unified display which rises to great excitement at the climax of the storm. The following year, after a row with the composer, he was replaced with Norman del Mar, whose Decca recording demonstrates an almost exact reproduction of the work of his predecessor.

What does differ between the première and the later Decca recording is the quality of the recorded sound. The BBC engineers, who must have had quite a task deciding precisely where to put their microphones, seem to have opted for a generally distanced style with captures the church acoustic superbly but fails at a number of points to bring out the higher pitches in the orchestra and allows some of the children’s solo voices to become submerged in more complicated passages. On the other hand the increased resonance does help to project Trevor Anthony’s Voice of God – rather polite and refined under del Mar, here closer to Britten’s request for a “tremendous” sound. The solo cello and recorder representing the raven and the dove, however, benefit from Decca’s closer microphone observation, as do other delightful effects such as the slung mugs and the tone of the organ as the rainbow appears which here sounds rather mushy. That is not to gainsay the sterling efforts of the remastering by Andrew Rose, but at the same time it must be noted that Pristine’s ambient stereo is no match for the genuine stereo of Decca during their golden age of recording techniques (and presumably with the option of patching from multiple performances). Pristine provide their usual brief notes but no texts, I fear.

Where Rose’s remastering does pay very real dividends is in the coupled 1938 recording of the Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge here played by Boyd Neel and his orchestra who gave all the first performances of a work which they commissioned and which established Britten’s international reputation. Given the quality of the sound here, one can appreciate exactly why. The playing may very occasionally allow enthusiasm to get the better of precision, but one cannot fault the sense of engagement. Here the central point of comparison is of course with Britten’s own much later stereo account with the English Chamber Orchestra; there is greater clarity, and the sound is warmer, but even Britten finds it hard to match the sheer bubbling attack of the original performers.

Neither of these coupled recordings actually surpasses their Decca equivalents (one presumes that Britten supervised the live Noye sessions closely) but at the same time they provide valuable sidelights onto the process of the establishment of a performance tradition and are of course historically irreplaceable. Britten enthusiasts should not hesitate for a second to add them to their collections, especially in transfers as good as this.

Paul Corfield Godfrey

Availability: Pristine Classical

Additional cast
Noye’s Fludde
Thomas Bevan and Marcus Norman, trebles
Michael Crawford, tenor
Janette Miller, Katherine Dyson, Marilyn Baker, Penelope Allen, Doreen Metcalfe, Dawn Mendham and Beverley Newman, girl sopranos