Gordon Crosse, Benjamin Britten

condition (record/cover): NM / EX

A pairing that places a major early work by Gordon Crosse alongside two of Benjamin Britten's most important chamber pieces, and that illuminates, in doing so, something of the particular continuity that defined British new music in the early post-war decades. Crosse's Ariadne (1965) for oboe and chamber orchestra - with its debt to Britten's example, its modal clarity, and its formal assurance - shares the disc with the music of the older composer whose presence in the culture Crosse inhabited was formative for an entire generation: Britten's Six Metamorphoses After Ovid Op. 49 for solo oboe (1951) and his Phantasy Quartet Op. 2 for oboe and string trio (1932).

The juxtaposition reveals both the strength of the Britten inheritance and Crosse's already considerable independence within it: the Ariadne knows what Britten achieved and is not overwhelmed by the knowledge. Janet Craxton plays the oboe throughout, and her performance gives both composers their full due. An Argo pressing of a record that deserves to be much better known than it is. Argo, ZRG 842.