Benjamin Britten : The Choral Edition

   in Choir & Organ (Sep, 2013)
The Britten centenary is not only bringing forth a plethora of new recordings, but several companies are also taking advantage by reissuing and repackaging material from their back catalogues, usually at cut prices. Hard on the heels of The Sixteen’s recent Britten Collection (on the CORO label), and in direct competition to it, is Chandos’s handsome boxed set of Paul Spicer and the Finzi Singers’ Britten Choral Edition. Like The Sixteen’s discs, these recordings were made in the 1990s and cover broadly the same repertoire; they also share a fairly similar interpretive approach. Neither set is absolutely complete (nor do they claim to be) – for example, Britten’s Voices for Today, …