Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Frontispiece
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on Transliteration and Sources
- 1 Earliest and Lifelong Russophilia
- 2 Britten and Shostakovich, 1934–63
- 3 Britten and Prokofiev
- 4 Britten and Stravinsky
- 5 Hospitality and Politics
- 6 Pushkin and Performance
- 7 Britten and Shostakovich Again: Dialogues of War and Death, 1963–76
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- 1 Letter from Lord Armstrong of Ilminster
- 2 Interview with Alan Brooke Turner
- 3 Interview with Keith Grant
- 4 Interview with Lord Harewood
- 5 Interview with Victor Hochhauser
- 6 Interview with Lilian Hochhauser
- 7 Letter from Sir Charles Mackerras
- 8 Interview with Donald Mitchell
- 9 Interview with Sir John Morgan
- 10 Interview with Gennady Rozhdestvensky
- 11 Interview with Irina Shostakovich
- 12 Letter from Boris Tishchenko
- 13 Interview with Oleg Vinogradov
- 14 Interview with Galina Vishnevskaya
- 15 Letters from Dmitri Smirnov and Elena Firsova
- 16 Letter from Vladislav Chernushenko
- 17 Britten's Volumes of Tchaikovsky's Complete Works
- Bibliography and Sources
7 - Letter from Sir Charles Mackerras
from Appendices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Frontispiece
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on Transliteration and Sources
- 1 Earliest and Lifelong Russophilia
- 2 Britten and Shostakovich, 1934–63
- 3 Britten and Prokofiev
- 4 Britten and Stravinsky
- 5 Hospitality and Politics
- 6 Pushkin and Performance
- 7 Britten and Shostakovich Again: Dialogues of War and Death, 1963–76
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- 1 Letter from Lord Armstrong of Ilminster
- 2 Interview with Alan Brooke Turner
- 3 Interview with Keith Grant
- 4 Interview with Lord Harewood
- 5 Interview with Victor Hochhauser
- 6 Interview with Lilian Hochhauser
- 7 Letter from Sir Charles Mackerras
- 8 Interview with Donald Mitchell
- 9 Interview with Sir John Morgan
- 10 Interview with Gennady Rozhdestvensky
- 11 Interview with Irina Shostakovich
- 12 Letter from Boris Tishchenko
- 13 Interview with Oleg Vinogradov
- 14 Interview with Galina Vishnevskaya
- 15 Letters from Dmitri Smirnov and Elena Firsova
- 16 Letter from Vladislav Chernushenko
- 17 Britten's Volumes of Tchaikovsky's Complete Works
- Bibliography and Sources
Summary
26 January 2010
The conductor Sir Charles Mackerras ch (1925–2010) was closely associated with Britten's music in the 1950s.
[Extract]
At the time I was working with Britten [during the 1956–9 Aldeburgh Festivals] he had not yet met Shostakovich personally but he made no secret of the fact that he considered him an extremely dramatic composer and that he admired Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth more than the local composers like Vaughan Williams.
As far as Tchaikovsky is concerned, Ben always said that he had composed The Prince of the Pagodas with a score of The Sleeping Beauty by his side. I always had the impression that Ben's tastes in music were definitely anti-Germanic (look at his low opinion of Brahms and Richard Strauss) and that he was more inspired by the passionate nature of Tchaikovsky's music, apart from the fortuitous bond of homosexuality. That he was inspired also by Italian composers such as Verdi is very evident in the big ensembles in Peter Grimes.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Benjamin Britten and Russia , pp. 302Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016