I'm not sure what I think any more, Ron. There've certainly been times when I've been presented with a woman and wished it was a man, if you see what I mean, but when you and Ollie and people say such positive things about specific female soloists my phobia starts to evaporate, although I suppose it may re-condense as the temperature drops.

All this stuff about the voice being above rather than within the orchestra, though ... Is that strictly true? I mean, it obviously is in terms of sung pitch, but isn't there something about overtone spectra in a high male voice which cancels that out? I always assumed that's why it seems intuitively right to notate tenor parts an octave above the supposed actual pitch.

Yes, LES ILLUMINATIONS with the self-same tenor, in fact

We've checked the Bolshoi Theatre archives and couldn't find any records of an MND production.  At that period the Bolshoi performed everything in Russian translation (including Verdi, Puccini etc) so we also checked the library - there are no vocal scores or any other material of MND there.  We reasoned that if they had indeed made their own Russian translation copies, they wouldn't have returned them to Boosey's afterwards - why would they?   I also checked with Natalia Illiukhevich, who was the repetiteur for the War Requiem rehearsals in Moscow and for Britten's other activities whilst here - she had never heard of MND having been done here.  (In fact knowledge of this work is so scanty in Russia that we were told "no such piece exists" by several sources).  As far as I know DIV hasn't been done here either.

Just for the record, the other works by UK living composers were Benjamin/At First Light, PMD/The Fall Of The Leafe, RRB/"Concerto for Stan Getz".  I realise there'll be howls of "why not this, or that", but our job was to present British music (alongside Russian works of similar era) in just 3-4 concerts... the British Council were generous, but their funds aren't bottomless.  I think we got a very high hit-rate from the C20th (Tippett, Walton, Bridge, Holst, Britten, Howells, Mathias),  we had a song recital (Bullock/Martineau) with two Britten cycles & Prokofiev & Muldowney, an entire Jacobean programme (Ensemble of the Globe Theatre) and complete Purcell Ode On St Cecilia's Day.  There was also some Mudge, Attwood glees, Helikon-Opera guested with Lampe's PYRAMUS & THISBE.  We managed to work both Noel Coward and Stephen Storace into the (obligatory-in-all-Russian-concerts) encores, along with a Variations On The Sailor's Hornpipe of my own devising (done overnight with pencil & paper; we were guests of the Naval Academy Of The Black Sea Fleet).  The Russian music included Sviridov, Fomin, Bronner, Belova & Boris Tchaikovsky.

There are, btw, now a few countertenors in Russia, 1-2 of whom might negotiate Oberon with reasonable success - one appeared in the Purcell listed above.  It remains a voice-type regarded with some suspicion in the slavic world, though - the ban on female voices in Churches (which occasioned the "English countertenor school" de facto) hasn't applied in the Orthodox Church for centuries, and women sing the upper parts in all ecclesiastical music in Russia.

We were working with the "discipline" that there was no budget to take an entire orchestra "on the road" (nor to house them all in some of the locations) so we based on a solid string section with guest wind/brass...  that partly explains the rational for the specific works chosen    "The Fall Of The Leafe" had been written in 2004, and we wanted to do something which was less than a year old when we played it in 2005.  It's a kind of "gloss" (in the medieval sense of the term) on a piece of the same name in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book by Martin Peerson (which was played immediately prior).  We are about (22 Sept) to open a season of contemporary music from Latin America, featuring new works from Mexico

Thanks for that!  We'll follow the lead to Obraztsova's door and see if she can shed any light on it?   It's bizarre that the Bolshoi themselves say they have not performed the work?

 I've just listened to yesterday's Britten concert at Cadogan Hall which I recorded as the garden presented mettle more attractive.

We've been spoilt for choice this summer by the wide range on offer at the Lunchtime Concerts in addition to the Cadogan Hall afternoon recitals.

Listening to Christine Rice's refreshing performance of the Britten Cabaret Songs, I thought I'd now got a recording to replace the Sarah Walker at Blackheath CD but today's Culture magazine (Sunday Times) has a most enthusiastic review of Christine Brewer's performance at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall last week.   (Memories for me of modestly priced student accommodation, at the nearby University during the Festival.)  Hugh Canning writes:   "... she relaxed visibly as she intoned Britten's ritzy Auden settings, Calypso, Tell Me The Truth About Love and Funeral Blues, delighting the audience with her witty and informal way with the words. And she was simply devastating in the spiritual arrangements, (John Carter's suite) singing with all her heart and soul the sultriest vocal allure of any US soprano since the great American diva Leontyne Price."

The Queen's Hall concerts used to be broadcast 'live' but now may be included in the post-Prom schedule.     One to watch out for.  

 I read somewhere that Ian Bostridge and Simon Keenlyside had discussed transposing some of Britten's song cycles for baritone. I do not like that thought at all. It was some time ago, so maybe the idea was dropped - if indeed it would be allowed by the publishers and the Britten Estate or Britten-Pears Foundation, or whoever is in charge of these things.

Chafing Dish - the 14th Symphony is dedicated to Britten.

Is it particularly the baritone voice you find "wrong" for transposed Britten cycles... or the idea of transposition per se?  Songs by other composers frequently (one might even say "normally") appeared in both keys...  for example, you can find both baritones and tenors singing Winterreise etc.  I've heard extremely credible performances of "Winter Words" and "The Poet's Echo" by mezzo-sopranos,  for example. 

I'm more curious and intrigued by your feelings on this than antagonistic here, btw    Is transposition a worse crime than, say... orchestrating the Cabaret Songs? 

Good afternoon, Uncle Ron!

I don't know if you have heard the Keenlyside/Martineau Schubert Lieder disk, but on it Keenlyside goes through hoops to stick with the original tonality of the published song - with great success, I'd say?  This takes him into the outer stratosphere of the baritone range in songs like Auf dem Bruck, but it works

In fact the mezzo I mentioned above (Svetlana Rossiyskaya) did take a crack at singing Poet's Echo in the original Vyshnevskaya soprano key, and although she "has the notes", she decided to take it down a minor 3rd, "because this is song, not opera, and it needs delicacy... I haven't got much delicacy above the stave, just welly - and this isn't Amneris.  I don't want to be forced into a phrasing or interpretation or tempo just to be able to "get" the notes.  When Vishnevskaya sang it, she knew she had the big guns packed away for safe keeping...  I need the same feeling too."

The points you raise about the problems of transposing orchestrally-accompanied songs are completely valid, of course. I have heard material like Wesendonck-Lieder performed transposed - the result was like a wet flannel, and ended-up pleasing no-one.  I have been flailing-around in the world of Handelian opera of late, and it's interesting to see that in many cases where a different voice-type took over a role later, Handel preferred to write new music rather than transpose the existing material.