Edward Gardner conducts Britten London Philharmonic Orchestra & Edward Gardner

• Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976): Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20:
• 1 Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20: I. Lacrymosa 07:16
• 2 Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20: II. Dies Irae 05:08
• 3 Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20: III. Requiem Aeternam 05:43
• Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway):
• 4 Britten: Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway): I. At Day-close in November 01:27
• 5 Britten: Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway): II. Midnight on the Great Western "The Journeying Boy" 04:22
• 6 Britten: Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway): III. Wagtail and Baby (A Satire) 02:29
• 7 Britten: Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway): IV. The Little Old Table 01:15
• 8 Britten: Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway): V. The Choirmaster's Burial (or The Tenor Man's Story) 04:12
• 9 Britten: Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway): VI. Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches and Nightingales) 01:08
• 10 Britten: Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway): VII. At the Railway Station, Upway (The Convict and Boy with the Violin) 03:00
• 11 Britten: Winter Words, Op. 52 (Orch. Robin Holloway): VIII. Before Life and After 03:05
• The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57:
• 12 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57: Prelude 02:09
• The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act I The Palace of the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom:
• 13 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act I The Palace of the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom: The Fool and the Dwarf 01:29
• The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act I Scene 1 The Palace of the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom:
• 14 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act I Scene 1 The Palace of the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom: Variation of Princess Belle Épine 02:32
• The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act II Scene 1 The Strange Journey of Belle Rose to the Pagoda Land:
• 15 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act II Scene 1 The Strange Journey of Belle Rose to the Pagoda Land: Introduction 01:32
• 16 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act II Scene 1 The Strange Journey of Belle Rose to the Pagoda Land: Waltz. Clouds, Stars and Moon 04:48
• 17 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act II Scene 1 The Strange Journey of Belle Rose to the Pagoda Land: Belle Rose borne in by the Frogs 01:12
• The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act II Scene 2 The Arrival and Adventures of Belle Rose in the Kingdom of the Pagodas:
• 18 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act II Scene 2 The Arrival and Adventures of Belle Rose in the Kingdom of the Pagodas: The Pagodas 02:39
• 19 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act II Scene 2 The Arrival and Adventures of Belle Rose in the Kingdom of the Pagodas: The Hunt 02:39
• The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act III The Palace of the Middle Kingdom:
• 20 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act III The Palace of the Middle Kingdom: Pas de Deux. Belle Rose and the Prince of the Pagodas 02:42
• 21 Britten: The Prince of the Pagodas Suite, Op. 57, Act III The Palace of the Middle Kingdom: Finale and Apotheosis 04:26
• Total Runtime 01:05:13

Info for Edward Gardner conducts Britten

This is Edward Gardner’s sixth release on LPO Label, and the third that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the label in 2025, having been preceded by the Rachmaninov: The Bells & Symphonic Dances and Edward Gardner conducts Dvořák and Schumann.

The Britten / Edward Gardner release comes from live concert performances recorded at London’s Royal Festival Hall (Sinfonia da Requiem and The Prince of the Pagodas), while Winter Words was recorded in Saffron Hall in 2021, at the close of the lockdown season.

Sinfonia da Requiem – A Bold, Early Masterpiece. Written at just 26 and originally commissioned to commemorate Japan’s 2600th imperial anniversary, Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem was rejected for being too solemn—but emerged as his only major purely orchestral work and a powerful response to the growing threat of war. ‘Gardner has long been an outstanding Britten interpreter, and Sinfonia da Requiem was tremendous as the visceral immediacy of its first two movements gave way to the calm contemplation of eternity with which it ends.’ (The Guardian)

Winter Words Britten’s poignant song cycle originally for tenor and piano, set to texts of 8 poems by Thomas Hardy is presented here in a new orchestration by Robin Holloway—a world premiere recording. ‘Spence’s nuanced feeling for the text communicated the intense but contained poignancy of passing time.’ (Opera Today)

The Prince of the Pagodas, Britten’s ballet with Edward Gardner’s distilled concert suite from The Prince of the Pagodas—another world premiere recording—fulfils Britten’s unrealised ambition to arrange his full-length ballet into a dramatic orchestral suite.

‘We saw [Pagoda Land] clearly in sound instead, helped by the LPO’s percussion section, tinkling and throbbing, gamelan-style.’ (The Times)

Nicky Spence, tenor
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Edward Gardner, conductor

Edward Gardner
born in Gloucester, has been Artistic Advisor to the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo since 2022 and will become its Music Director in 2024. He has also been Chief Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra since the 2021/22 season. He has held the same position with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra since 2015, with whom he has toured in Berlin, Munich and Amsterdam, at the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival, among others. After studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, he was Music Director of English National Opera from 2006 to 2015. As an opera conductor, he has made several guest appearances at the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Chicago Lyric Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Opéra national de Paris. He has appeared on the concert platform with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, he made his debut at the Bavarian State Opera with Peter Grimes.

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