Britten conducts the first recording of Peter Grimes

With the 50th anniversary of  Benjamin Britten's recording of Peter Grimes approaching, we unearth the glowing review from the October 1959 edition of Gramophone. The recording is now available on Decca Legends.

In the same issue, Eric Smith of Decca records wrote about the new recording processes being developed in the early days of stereo, employed in the Britten recording.

BRITTEN. Peter Grimes—complete.

Grimes Peter Pears (ten.) Ellen Orford Claire Watson (sop.) Capt. Balstrode James Pease (bass) Auntie Jean Watson (cont.) Bob Boles Raymond Nilsson (ten.) Swallow Owen Brannigan (bass) Mrs. Sedley Lauris Elms (m.sop.)  Ned Keene Geraint Evans (bar.) Rector John Lanigan (ten.) Hobson David Kelly (bass)  1st Niece Marion Studholme (sop.) 2nd Niece Iris Kells (sop.)

With the Chorus (Chorus-Master: Douglas Robinson) and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducted by Benjamin Britten. Decca Mono LXT5521-3; *Stereo SXL2150-2 (three 12 in., 86s. 3d. plus 285. lid. P.T.). The libretto is available from Messrs. Boosey and Hawkes, price 3s. 6d.

It is now just over fourteen years ago that the curtain rose for the first time on Peter Grimes, the first English opera on the grand scale which at once proclaimed itself a masterpiece, and which was soon to enter the repertoire of opera houses all over the world. The long delay in recording the opera, at which we have chafed, turns out to be a blessing in disguise for it now reaps the benefits of greatly improved methods of recording and reproduction and also of the new approach to production in the studio, which Decca have already so impressively demonstrated in Das Rheingold and here carry a stage further. Perhaps, in the Wagner opera, the hammering anvils and a few other things leapt out of the scene too forcibly in relation to their intrinsic importance: but the "effects" described in Eric Smith's interesting article elsewhere in this number are all in place here and never unduly obtruded, except one bell sound in Act 2 which—to make an atrocious pun—is too much of a big Ben for a village church. 

The essential conflict in the opera is between Grimes and the community, and the enormously important part given to the chorus could not have made the dramatic impact that it does on these discs in the older days of recording. The big ensembles are, on mono as well as stereo, wonderfully well contained, becoming a little congested only in the round in the Inn scene of Act I, "Old Joe has gone fishing". 

Two members of the original cast remain, Peter Pears and Owen Brannigan. Brannigan's characterisation of the officious and complacent Swallow is as good as ever and his clear enunciation is shared by all the male members of the cast. 

There have been excellent portrayals of Grimes since Pears created the part but none that reached his artistic stature, even allowing for the fact that the part was written with his particular vocal abilities in mind. His voice, inevitably, has lost some of its penetrating power but he manages the big climaxes with great art and his feeling for words, for every variance and shade of emotion in his part, remains unsurpassed. I can well believe that as Mr. Smith writes, a studio has rarely witnessed as wthing so poignant as his singing, of the mad scene in the last Act. It is almost unbearably moving. Two other moments, in this great performance, haunt the memory, the beautifully sung passage before the storm interlude beginning "What harbour shelters peace"—which so wonderfully provides a lull in the interlude itself and suggests the lonely figure of Peter outlined against the stormy seascape—and the marvellously imaginative passage beginning "Now the Great Bear and Pleiades" with its heartbreaking conclusion "who can turn skies back and begin again?". Those four repetitions of "who" would move a heart of stone one would think, but merely suggest to the villagers in the Inn that Grimes is drunk: its repeated notes are cruelly caricatured by the two nieces. 

If Peter Pears is, for me, the only Grimes, Joan Cross is the only Ellen Orford: in this matter I do regret that the opera was not recorded before. I miss in Claire Watson's intelligent and often sensitive performance the humanity and maturity of Joan Cross's schoolmistress, "the poor teacher, lonely and widow'd". Here again Britten had her voice in mind and she negotiated with ease phrases that give Miss Watson some trouble. The second phrase of the arioso "Let her among you without fault cast the first stone", a downward scale starting on a high note, is unevenly sung, and so is the upward scale in the Act 2 arioso "Glitter of waves and glitter of sunlight", nor does Miss Watson manage the soft high notes in the "Embroidery" air well, or those in two phrases on the word "peace" elsewhere. These things said there is much to praise; the middle part of her voice is warm, the lowest notes very telling, and many phrases are beautifully shaped as for example when she says to Peter in the first scene of Act 2, "Were we mistaken when we schemed to solve your life by lonely toil? ... We were mistaken to have dreamed". Here she is in the very kin of the part, as also in her scene with Grimes's apprentice outside the church and at many other points. Jean Watson is a rumbustious Auntie if without the Rabelaisian flavour Edith Coates brought to the part and Lauris Elms does well as the amateur criminologist drugtaker Mrs. Sedley, whose sinister figure haunts the scenes in which she appears. Marion Studholme and Iris Kells are the pert nieces, anybody's money, to the life. I particularly like James Pease's forthright and sympathetic Balstrode, Raymond Nilsson's ranting and lecherous Bob Boles and John Lanigan's nicely stylised Rector. 

The mind retains a clear picture of every character, major or minor, in the opera, sometimes by means of a few telling phrases such as the Carter Hobson's "I have to go from pub to pub", Mrs. Sedley's "Good Lord" and "Murder most foul it is", or Auntie's "a joke's a joke", and the Rector's "Good morning" and "Goodnight". Britten is a master of characterisation. 

The Covent Garden Chorus cover themselves with glory at every point and nowhere more than in the great scene in the last Act which begins (on side 6) with Mrs. Sedley calling for Swallow now she has—as she thinks—the clue to the death of the apprentice—and moves with cumulative excitement and terrifying menace to the revengful cries "Ha, ha, we'll make the murderer pay" (all the more terrible because of Britten's masterly use at this point of some of the measures of the Ländler tune at the Borough Dance, now a dance of bloodlust) and then to those unforgettable three-fold brazen throated shouts of "Peter Grimes"; the second of them, after one of the most dramatic pauses in opera, answered by the ghostly note of a foghorn. This is a tremendous climax, the hatred of a crowd of mostly decent people stirred up to boiling point against the non-conformist, and full of a cruelty worse than the sadistic impulses of Grimes. 

There follows another masterstroke that may easily not be recognised in the theatre. All through the succeeding interlude the horns hold the dominant seventh—built up from the foghorn's single note—the same chord that, on muted strings, accompanies Grimes's first words in the opera "I swear by Almighty God" (and so sets him apart) in answer to Swallow's roughly spoken instruction and the loud chord for brass that follows it. This sixth and last Interlude, and the scene that succeeds it, a picture of a desperate tortured soul, are perhaps the greatest things in the opera; on paper so simple, in effect seeming to contain all the sorrows of lonely mankind and finally capturing our sympathy for the outcast. 

One wants to write about every page of this magnificent work but this is a review and I must end with the most important thing of all in the performance, and that is Britten's conducting. Four of the Interludes are often played in the concert hall and of course were recorded by van Beinum on Decca LW5244 but here they sound, under the composer's direction, as never before—and that is true of every bar in the opera. Now at last free of the distractions in the theatre, the barbaric chocolate munchers, match-strikers and whisperers, one can appreciate to the full the inventiveness, beauty, and vividness of the orchestration, the whole masterly construction of the opera. 

The Covent Garden Orchestra rise superbly to their task and indeed one is left with an impression of the entire cast, of everybody concerned, being inspired by the presence and direction of the composer. 

Stereo naturally lends greater spaciousness to the sound but the fine sense of' perspective gained by the different positioning of the singers, the feel of entrance and exit, are all present in the monophonic discs and the producer and engineers must be congratulated on their outstanding success which sets a new and very high standard. The balance nearly all through is remarkably good. 

I cannot pretend to have been able to review these records dispassionately, having known since childhood a village on the Norfolk coast like this one and grown up with its fishing community, and having been there when the cruel North Sea, the dominant force in the opera, broke through on a night of such a storm as Britten depicts and claimed the land for miles around; having seen so many dawns like the one he so exquisitely paints in the first Interlude and again at the end of the opera. No, I feel too involved to be dispassionate but yet declare with certainty that every lover of great music and great theatre will be thrilled with this magnificent achievement—even if he may not have received any such overwhelming impression in the opera house—and proud of its nationality. 

A.R.