The Contrastes ensemble (with Éric Speller, oboe, Ophélie Gailladr, cello and Olivier Peyrebrune, piano) released a CD with five chamber music works by Benjamin Britten. The CD opens with the beautiful Phantasy Quartet for oboe, violin, viola and cello from 1933. The creation of the work has to do with the Cobett Prize instituted in 1905 by Walter Wilson Cobbett. This award sought to revive the
… tradition of Elizabethan fantasia. In 1910, Britten's teacher Frank Bridge had won the prize, and in 1933 Britten made an attempt with his Phantasy Quartet. The CD also contains the Two Insect Pieces (1935) for oboe and piano, the Temporal Variations (1936) for oboe and piano, the Six Metamorphoses after Ovid (1951) for oboe solo and the Suite for cello solo No. 1 (1964) . The last mentioned work was, as well as a number of other of Britten's late cello works, written for the legendary cellist Rostropovich. Stéphanie-Marie Degand, violin, and Agathe Blondel, viola also work on this CD. (HJ) _more
