Britten in Love: Robin Tritschler & Malcolm Martineau explore the composer's emotional life through his music

Britten & Lennox Berkeley (Photo: https://www.lennoxberkeley.org.uk)

Britten in Love: Lennox Berkeley, Benjamin Britten; Robin Tritschler, Malcolm Martineau; Oxford International Song Festival at Holywell Music Room
Reviewed 11 October 2026

Songs from Lennox Berkeley and Benjamin Britten linking together the emotional and inimate threads of Britten's life 

In 2024, tenor Robin Tritschler's disc Songs for Peter Pears [see my review] explored songs written for Peter Pears by Lennox Berkeley, Britten, Arthur Oldham, Richard Rodney Bennett and Geoffrey Bush. Now, Tritschler has taken a somewhat different look at the same time-period. On Sunday October 11 October 2026, Robin Tritschler was joined by pianist Malcolm Martineau at Holywell Music Room for Britten in Love as part of the Oxford International Song Festival. 

The recital presented a sequence of songs interweaving Britten's love-life in music. The first half included songs by Lennox Berkeley (with whom Britten had a brief romantic relationship), songs setting W.H.Auden (who was a big influence on the young Britten), as well as two of Britten's Sechs Hölderlin Fragmente which hint at Britten's close friendship with Wulff Scherchen, seven years his junior. Britten would dedicate one of Les Illuminations to Wulff, and another to Pears. 

The second half focused on Peter Pears, with songs from Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (the first song cycle Britten wrote for Pears' voice) and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, plus some of the folksong arrangements which Britten created for his and Pears' song recitals.

Lennox Berkeley was in fact the first composer to set W.H.Auden's poetry and he returned to it in the 1950s for his Five Poems of W.H.Auden. The recital began with 'Lauds' from this cycle, with its constant flow of both text and piano accompanied. The poem piles detail upon detail and Berkeley follows this, but ends with the voice unaccompanied in touching manner.

Next came the first of the Sechs Hölderlin Fragmente (written in 1945 and dedicated to Prince Louis of Hesse), 'Sokrates und Alcibiades', a fragment about the importance of beauty. For the first verse the piano was barely there, with a dramatic yet elaborate vocal line creating something rather austere. Yet in the second verse, Socrates response to Alcibiades, things were more conventional yet the ending was touching.

W.H.Auden, Sir William Menzies Coldstream, Britten when working at GPO Film Unit
Photo from Alina Stefanescu

Britten first met Auden at the GPO Film Unit in 1935 and the two would have six years of productive collaboration. Personally, Auden's far greater confidence in his own homosexuality had an influence on the younger Britten. Fish in the unruffled lakes dates from 1938, with its fine rippling piano part and spiky rhythms in the voice, it can disguise the complexities of Auden's lyrics. It is worth bearing in mind that Britten mainly set Auden's pre-existing poetry. Here, Tritschler gave a vivid projection of word and meaning, with the mood turning darker and then finally magic happens at the end. Also from 1937, Seascape (from On this Island) had vivid, almost declamatory vocal line with Tritschler's involving projection of the words creating some fine storytelling.

On this Island had a somewhat flexible structure, with a second set of songs projected. Amongst these were Underneath the abject willow and To lie flat on the back. The first came over as a somewhat spiky popular song, which Tritschler and Martineau took at quick a lick creating a virtuoso feel to it. The second song was equally spiky, more recitative-like. This poem, in particular, was remarkably queer-coded and makes for fascinating listening, given the time-period. However, there is a sense that the combination of Auden's words and Britten's prodigious genius created a partnership that was almost too clever for its own good.

We returned to Berkeley with more of his Auden settings. First 'What's in Your Mind, My Dove, My Coney' from his Op. 53 set. Less spiky than Britten's settings, the song relied on an easy, neoclassical piano part and words being projected via lyric arioso. Lay your sleeping head my love goes back to 1927, this early Auden setting, with its rocking piano part, was a sort of lullaby which Berkeley made touching despite the rather disturbing words. Like 'Lauds' it relied on the piling on of detail upon detail.

Britten's 'Die Jugend' from the Sechs Hölderlin Fragmente was lively and full of rhythmic detail. It's eager impetuosity rather in contrast to the emotional tenor of the song.

Night covers up the rigid land returned us to Berkeley setting Auden in 1927. This was a quiet piece, intense and rather expressionistic. Berkeley's Five Housman Songs were written in 1940, just after Britten and Berkeley had parted company as Britten chose Pears. Given that Berkeley wrote the songs for Britten and Pears, and that he chose some of Housman's later, more explicitly homosexual lyrics, it is not surprising that the songs went into a drawer, only to be resurrected 35 years later when Pears gave the manuscript to Peter Dickinson and Ian Partridge for performance. We heard two songs, 'He would not stay for me' and 'Because I liked you better'. Both were bleak, expressionist and intense. Terrific songs that are a long way from Butterworth-style settings of Housman.

Britten's 'Nocturne' comes from his Auden song-cycle On this Island. It was quiet with Tritschler's seductive line being mesmerising, until things got darker in the last verse when the words were very pointed indeed - 'Calmly till the orning break/ Let him lie, then gently wake'. And you marvel again at how queer-coded all this material was.

We ended with one of the cabaret songs. Now here, Britten was setting an Auden text specifically created for being set to music. Neither man seemed to be quite performing in the way the more serious songs made them. The result is more direct and more engaging, clever without being 'clever'. Tritschler took the words of Tell me the truth about love rather seriously and the result was very funny indeed, without any need to send up the music.

After the interval we moved to the 1940s, when Britten was writing songs for Peter Pears. We began, however, still in 1937 when Britten set a text by the poet Peter Burra who had been at Lancing College with Pears. It was Burra’s tragic early death in an aeroplane accident in April 1937 that brought Britten and Pears into a closer relationship. The song, Not even summer yet, began in an unassuming manner yet became more complex and spikier with a final verse that was very intense.

The Holy Sonnets of John Donne were completed on 19 August 1945, a few weeks after Britten’s return from Germany where he and Yehudi Menuhin had toured the liberated Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the end of July. The first we heard was 'Batter my heart' where the fast speed meant the words cascaded over each other with bright intensity. The songs virtuosic nature demonstrating Britten's confidence in Pears' technical abilities. However in this and the second Donne setting we heard, the sheer density of syllables meant that even Tritschler's fine diction failed to convey all the meaning.

The Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo are earlier, dating from Britten and Pears' exile in the USA. Here Britten felt freed from artistic restraint and absorbed other influences. There is something uncompromising about the Michelangelo settings, as well as a sort of rapprochment with bel canto (a reflection of Pears' voice perhaps). Sonetto XXXI was intense. The music felt as if it was swaying whilst Tritschler and Martineau's performance was compelling.

Another Donne setting, 'Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one' again produced a cascade of words and notes, in a vivid performance carry all away. Michelangelo's Sonetto XXXII was vivid chattering, creating something impetuous and urgent. The final song in this group was another Donne setting, 'Since she whom I love hath pay her last debt' where the relatively slow intense vocal line over a simple piano accompaniment created a rather romantic effect, building slowly to overwhelming intensity.

We ended with a selection of Britten's folksong arrangements. The majority of the folksong arrangements were completed well before the War Requiem and thus come from that period in his life effectively bounded by his American sojourn, Peter Grimes and the War Requiem (1962), with the majority being written for him and Pears to perform.

The Ash Grove was a quiet, unassuming piece of storytelling. Down by the Salley Gardens was quiet and serious, gradually becoming more intense. The Foggy Foggy Dew was a masterly piece of storytelling, with Tritschler being unassuming byt rather funny. The Miller of Dee had a rather vivid and very demonstrative piano part, and then O Waly, Waly was quiet and rather mesmerising.

There was an encore, on of Britten's realisations of Purcell, Music for while.

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