Recommendations from our site
“I was looking at this book again today and realizing how rich and fully researched this life is. It’s so detailed. Whilst it’s a life of our time—Britten died in 1976—it’s surprising what we don’t know about him. In spite of the huge archive of letters and diaries, it’s still not always easy to know what was going on inside Britten’s head. He was a rather private figure, and a lot of it is guesswork…Many people have written biographies of Britten and attempted it, but it’s a tall order. Kildea does it so well because he knows the music so well. This is very much a life and works. It’s called Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, but the music is always there. Kildea writes beautifully about the music and integrates it into the narrative of the life. You end up wanting to go away and listen to everything again, which, ultimately, is the acid test of any book about music—that it sends you back to the music.” Read more...
Andrew Ford, Musicians, Music Critics & Scholar
