Benjamin Britten
Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a
Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England in 1913, and died in Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1976. He completed his first opera, Peter Grimes, in 1945; the Sea Interludes were first performed with the opera in 1945 in London with Reginald Goodall conducting. They were first performed apart from the opera the same year by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the composer.  The score calls for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. Duration is approximately 16 minutes.
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Benjamin Britten came to the United States in 1939 and spent two fruitful years here. His music had been received with indifference in England, but that was about to change. When he came to hear the Boston Symphony perform one of his works, Serge Koussevitzky commissioned Britten to compose an opera to be dedicated to the conductor’s late wife. Back in England, Britten composed Peter Grimes, an opera that not only brought his name before the world, but began a resurgence of English opera not seen since the time of Purcell.
Peter Grimes is a dark tale about the tragic fall of its title character. Peter is an antihero: a violent man, an outcast in his own village, he is believed by the villagers to have caused the deaths of two young apprentices. He comes to realize after he strikes the woman he loves that he cannot be helped, and he descends into madness. In the end, he commits suicide by scuttling his boat with himself aboard.
Britten linked the scenes of his opera with several interludes for orchestra. These are picturesque, giving an impression of life by the sea and those whose livelihoods depend on it. But they also contain the same dark undercurrents as the opera itself.
Dawn sets the scene for the beginning of the opera. As the seaside awakes, the high-voiced instruments suggest a bleak loneliness; the low and soft chords seem to give rhythm to the immense mass of the sea, and a hint of the danger that lies beneath the surface.
As Sunday Morning opens, the French horns provide the peal of church bells.  The long lyrical line in the strings will later accompany the words “glitter of waves and glitter of sunlight” in Act II.
The rich, dark strings of Moonlight are utterly beautiful in their uneasy calm. The Storm that follows is a part of the opera’s plot, yet it is also a metaphor for the tempest raging within Peter himself.  A moment of quiet arrives part-way through the movement; like the eye of a hurricane, it is followed—as it must be—by the storm’s furious return.
-Mark Rohr