Newsfacts

Britten, the boy wonder

London, UK
What more is there left to know about Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest 20th-century composers? A new exhibition tracing his early development reveals that he wrote far more music as a boy than previously realised. Young Britten: Schoolboy, Composer illuminates how, even as a child, Britten covered reams of manuscript paper with "dots and dashes". Here, according to Dr Lucy Walker, who has helped piece together this jigsaw of juvenilia for the Britten Thematic Catalogue, his inclination towards vocal works is already in surprising evidence. The boy composer's deft way with words, his distinctiveness as a melodist and his lifelong affinity with song – an interest kindled perhaps by his singer mother and later celebrated in the lyrical works he wrote for his singer-partner Peter Pears – began when he was six, with a ditty about rabbits. From the earliest surviving work, "Do you no that my Daddy has gone to London today", dating from 1919, to his official opus one, the amazingly accomplished Sinfonietta of 1932, the year he left the Royal College of Music, there is a selection from an astonishing 730 pieces of music. Only now have many of these largely unpublished and often tantalisingly unfinished compositions been nailed to specific years in Britten's early life. 1925, for instance, was unqestionably an annus mirabilis, in which he composed obsessively, producing no fewer than 125 works, mainly for piano but also for voice and choir. Any ordinary parent might have been justifiably worried. (The Independent)

Gustav Holt’s peerless Planets

Boston, USA
The Planets, composed in 1914-16 and premiered under the baton of Adrian Boult, made Gustav Holst a very popular figure. The real Holst was a more "serious" composer than one might think from a quick listen to this all-stops-out essay in orchestral showmanship. Yet even here, there are characteristics of that deeper musician, in the remarkable gift for melody (exhibited on nearly every page of the score) and in the music's pervasive mysticism. The suite opens with a portrait of "Mars, the Bringer of War." The movements that follow are "Venus, the Bringer of Peace," "Mercury, the Winged Messenger," "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity," "Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age," "Uranus, the Magician" and "Neptune, The Mystic." Holst's treatment of the planets focuses not on their celestial nature, but on the astrological aspects long associated with them and their mythological namesakes. The whole score has become a modern classic, often performed in a pops setting. Today's master of extraterrestrial music, John Williams, has borrowed freely from The Planets in his film scores, most notably in his depiction of the Empire forces in Star Wars, which echoes the sinister martial rhythm heard at the beginning of "Mars, the Bringer of War." (NPR Music)

Alex Prior needs to compose himself

London, UK
We should forgive this young conductor his overblown ideas – but if he doesn't grow up soon he could end up just another infant phenomenon. Tom Service reports: ‘I'm rather gripped by Channel 4's The World's Greatest Musical Prodigies at the moment. It presents us the story of 16-year-old composer and conductor Alex Prior flying round the world, cherry-picking four soloists for a concerto he will compose for them all, and which we'll get to hear bits of next week in the final instalment. (The piece, called Velesslavitsa, is a hymn, Prior says, "to the glory of the process of music-making" and was premiered at the Sage Gateshead at the end of April.) As you'd probably expect, the title is something of a misnomer: Channel 4 haven't been round the world hearing every prodigiously talented kid, and, according to the BBC Music Magazine (who came up with a list of the 10 greatest classical prodigies of all time last month), there aren't any watertight criteria for comparing the talents of one musical child against the others. The danger is that a parade of prodigies becomes a pageant of technical brilliance over any other index of musical accomplishment. Prior is aware of this, and last week, in America, chose a violinist, Michael, who was much less gifted technically than some of the other children, because he liked the way he communicated with an audience. (Prior also seemed to relish his Simon Cowell role, rather cruelly telling one of the rejected cellists that he had no connection with the composer, the music or the audience.) His guiding experts, including violinist Ida Haendel – one of two helmet-haired ladies advising him – disagreed with his decision. (The Guardian)

Musicians gather around a celebrated pianist

Lugano, Switzerland
The 2009 edition of the Martha Argerich Project, a three-week event now underway as part of the Lugano Music Festival, is scheduled to close on June 29, with a grand program of opera excerpts. But don’t expect any singers. The Progetto, as it is known in the Italian speaking region of Switzerland, is almost exclusively an instrumental affair, and thus the concert will consist of transcriptions, involving 10 pianists, including Ms. Argerich herself, and 11 other instrumentalists. If all goes according to plan, it will be the 11th concert in which the elusive pianist participates at this year’s Progetto. Concert impresarios the world over have found that they can do little to deter Ms. Argerich from her notorious tendency to cancel performances, yet the formula of the Progetto seems to do the trick, difficult as it would be to duplicate elsewhere: just surround her with 50 or more top-notch musicians whom she enjoys both as people and as performers, then let her set the terms of their working relationship. Because of her cancellations, some may think of Ms. Argerich as antisocial, but by all accounts she loves companionship. Fellow participants at the Progetto include established superstars, accomplished musicians who are less well known and young performers identified by Ms. Argerich as having singular promise. (The New York Times)