Birtwistle: Punch and Judy - A tragical comedy or a comical tragedy     | NMC Recordings NMCD138

Birtwistle: Punch and Judy - A tragical comedy or a comical tragedy

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Label: NMC Recordings

Cat No: NMCD138

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Opera

Release Date: 14th May 2007

Contents

Artists

Stephen Roberts
Phyllis Bryn-Julson
Jan Degaetani
Philip Langridge
David Wilson
John Tomlinson
London Sinfonietta

Conductor

David Atherton

Works

Birtwistle, Harrison

Punch and Judy

Artists

Stephen Roberts
Phyllis Bryn-Julson
Jan Degaetani
Philip Langridge
David Wilson
John Tomlinson
London Sinfonietta

Conductor

David Atherton

About

As a whole the opera loses none of its powerful and sustained impact when compared with Birtwistle’s own more mature compositions. If anything, its startling primitivisms stand out more vividly, while its not inconsiderable moments of reflection and lyricism acquire an enhanced poignancy. The performance (a 1980 Gramophone Award winner) gains immeasurably from the alert control of David Atherton and the superlative musicianship of the London Sinfonietta.’ Gramaphone

In 1965 Birtwistle decided to turn his back on a potential career as a professional performer, sold his clarinets and decided to devote all his efforts to composition. He travelled to Princeton as a Harkness Fellow where he completed the opera Punch and Judy. This work, together with Verses for Ensembles and The Triumph of Time, firmly established Birtwistle as a leading voice in British music: its premiere at the 1968 Aldeburgh festival was a succès de scandale, causing Benjamin Britten to walk out in protest.

Punch and Judy elaborates the traditional puppet-play into an opera of stylised violence and ritual. While the simplicity of the children’s entertainment is retained in the opera by the characters—familiar and puppet-like—by the invented ‘nursery-rhymes’ of the libretto, and by the waltzes, lullabies and serenades of the music, the tragi-comic actions of a homicidal puppet are raised almost to the status of myth as Punch murders Judy over and over again.

This re-release on NMC’s mid-price Ancora label makes available once more the original recording of this truly groundbreaking work, previously available on Decca Headline and Etcetera.

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