Ian Crisp wrote:

>I heard the wonderful Ian Bostridge sing this superb work in the Tramway
>in Glasgow about four years ago, and I've never heard better in my life.
>I believe he's recorded it, along with a number of other Britten pieces,
>but I have yet to get hold of the CD.

EMI 5 56871 2 Bamberger Symphoniker/ Britten Sinfonia/ Daniel Harding

I attended the 10 October Barbican concert where Bostridge sang the
Serenade with the LSO strings conducted by Daniel Harding, with David
Pyatt on horn.  The Serenade was never so creepy and nightshaded.  After
a note-cracked prologue, Pyatt played with complete security.  The
concert-hall's half-light shining from above made Bostridge's thin face
even more of a cadaverous deathmask as he turned his head to sing to all
sections of the audience.  Not for him the unfocused look and projection of
singers who just stand and deliver.

Ian Bostridge has taken part in Deborah Warner's staging of Janacek's The
Diary of One Who Vanished, a co-production between English National Opera
and the Royal National Theatre, which was performed in Dublin last week and
goes to Paris before it arrives on the South Bank next month.  Immediately
after that, Bostridge gives the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze's Six
Songs from the Arabian, which the composer wrote for him.

James Kearney
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