BRITTEN Phaedra, op. 93.1 Lachrymae, op. 48a.1,2 Sinfonietta, op. 1. The Sword in the Stone.1 Movement for Wind Sextet. Night Mail: End sequence1,3 • Lionel Friend, cond; Nash Ens; Roger Chase (va);2 Nigel Hawthorne (narr)3 • HELIOS CDH 55225 (65:21)

Helios’s budget-priced reissue offers a superbly recorded and well-performed survey of Britten from his student days to his final work for voice and orchestra. It includes relative rarities, such as Night Mail with actor Nigel Hawthorne, beloved of British comedy fans from Yes, Minister, and star players such as clarinetist Michael Collins in the Wind Sextet and Sinfonietta.

Phaedra has had several quality recordings, including that of the dedicatee, Janet Baker, and Ann Murray on Naxos. It may be a trick of the mind, but there are moments when Hyperion’s Jean Rigby sounds like Baker. With all respect to the latter, Rigby’s diction is clearer and she brings a regal dignity to Racine’s tragic heroine.

Violist Roger Chase brings a silken tone to the most elegant recording of Lachrymae in the composer’s own orchestration. I particularly liked the improvisatory quality Chase brings to the Allegretto as well as the beautifully vibrated pizzicatos in the Animato. Lionel Friend and the Nash Ensemble provide the perfect accompaniment.

Friend’s Sinfonietta is equally fine: an assured, virtuoso performance warmly recorded and flawlessly textured. It has less bite than the composer’s recording and is less dramatic than Daniel Harding’s recent EMI disc but is better played than either.

The Sword in the Stone, commissioned by the BBC in 1939 as incidental music for a radio dramatization of T. H. White’s novel, is more of a curiosity. Its motifs and Wagner quotations remind us of Britten’s youthful admiration for the German composer. Similarly, the Movement for Wind Sextet, composed during Britten’s final term at the Gresham School, reveals the young composer’s interest in Schoenberg. The writing for winds is idiomatic and the material interesting but not as confident as the Sinfonietta, which Britten would call his op. 1, a work that also pays homage to Schoenberg.

Nigel Hawthorne’s deadpan patter—text by Auden—is ideal for Night Mail’s end sequence: music composed for a famed documentary telling the romantic tale of the overnight mail train from London to Glasgow. Would a young listener hear this as an artistic precursor of rap?

FANFARE: Michael Fine