In a recent thread on late great works I listed one of Britten's last
works, Suite on English Folk Tunes:  "A Time There Was," without getting a
rise out of anybody.  I half-expected someone to snarl, "Call that slight
thing a great work?" I do, actually, maybe because all of Britten's works
strike me as impressively inventive and distinctive-sounding.  This one,
in five movements and ten themes, I find profoundly moving as well,
particularly the final section, which is quietly elegiac.  It is hard to
follow it with anything.  At the American premiere, which Bernstein gave
with the New York Philharmonic, the audience found it hard to follow it
even with applause, which is a generous way of saying it was a stingy
audience.  Someone even tried to stare me down for clapping a moment too
long and a bit too loud for her taste.  I wanted to cry out, "Don't you
know the man is dying?!" Anyone know this work?

Jim Tobin