Britten & Shostakovich: Music based on texts by Michelangelo

Among the approximately 300 Sonnets composed by Michelangelo Buonarroti, seven were chosen by Benjamin Britten and eleven by Dmitri Shostakovich to be set to music in works for male voice and piano. Each of these unions of music and poetry is a pinnacle in the 20th-century art song literature. Transcending the barriers of time, the two Modern composers dialogue with a Renaissance genius from centuries earlier, the immense painter, sculptor and architect, Michelangelo (1475–1564). Also a poet, he channelled into his writing all his life’s turmoil, restlessness and personal and professional anger, preferring an energetic, passionate, bristling language closer to the lexicon of Dante than to that of Petrarch, both of whom he met while frequenting the circle of humanists at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

This recording’s juxtaposition of Britten’s and Shostakovich’s gazes towards Michelangelo is a felicitous choice: it allows us to compare the composers, distinguish them and appreciate their peculiarities, and understand the profound reasons underlying their passion for these poems.

Michelangelo often writes about love, and it is this theme that Benjamin Britten favours in his 7 Sonnets, written whilst in the United States at the beginning of the Second World War having decided to leave England. He would only return home in 1942, shortly before this work’s premiere on 23 September at London’s Wigmore Hall. The dedication reiterates the work’s private significance: To Peter. Peter Pears was the composer’s favourite tenor interpreter of his own music and the man with whom he formed a lasting love affair. Britten, in a choice that would remain unique in his oeuvre, sets Michelangelo’s original Italian.

Shostakovich’s first inspiration for his Suite on Verses of Michelangelo can be traced to his hearing Britten’s 7 Sonnets sung by Peter Pears in Moscow in 1966. Shostakovich, who dedicated his work to his wife Irina Antonovna, was so impressed with Britten’s settings that he immediately sought out Michelangelo’s verses in Russian translation (by Avram Efros). He chose eleven of the sonnets, adding a title of his own to each and rearranging them in a personal sequence. The first performance took place on 23 January 1975, seven months before the composer’s death. The eleven sonnets contain different cues, both personal and political, from Michelangelo’s life, and in the musical settings one hears a reference to Shostakovich’s own condition as an artist in a conflictual relationship with authority.

Other information:
- Booklet in English contains liner notes by Sandro Cappelletto, and profiles of the artists
- Italian liner notes available at brilliantclassics.com

- Transcending the barriers of time, two 20-th century composers dialogue with a genius who lived centuries earlier. An immense painter, sculptor, architect, Michelangelo (1475-1564) wrote poetry expressing turmoil, restlessness, personal and professional anger, written in an energetic and passionate language. Both Dimitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten found inspiration in his texts, and by setting them to music they show their own feelings in a highly personal and characteristic way.
- This new recording presents the “7 Sonnets Op. 22” by Benjamin Britten, and the Michelangelo Suite Op. 145 by Dimitri Shostakovich, both intensely expressive and dramatic, each in his own unique musical language.
- Sung by Mark Milhofer (tenor) and Mirco Palazzi (bass), Marco Scolastra is their piano partner. Mark Milhofer’s recording of the Folk Songs by Britten for Brilliant Classics received many excellent reviews, including a “Recommended Recording of the Month” on Musicweb.