Musicatlas
News for Britten
- Britten composition discovered after 69 years
(1 March 2006)A till now lost Britten composition was found back by film maker John Mappleback in Great Britain after a 15 year search. In 1937 Benjamin Britten composed the "Roman Wall Blues" for a live radio documentary on a text by W. Auden. The piece is about a bored Roman soldier at Hadrian's Wall, on the border of Scotland and England. After a casual conversation with a 99 year old former employee of the Bank of England, the music turned up again. In this year's Aldeburgh Festival the "Roman Wall Blues" will be heard again for the first time since 1937. [source: The Guardian]
- Matthus "Te Deum" opens Dresdens Frauenkirche
(6 November 2005)German composer Siegfried Matthus has written a "Te Deum" that will be premiered in Dresden's newly renovated Frauenkirche on 11 November 2005. This church was destroyed at the end of World War II during allied attacks. The German conductor Kurt Masur already compared the piece with Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, composed for Coventry Cathedral in England, which was bombed by the Germans in the same war.