Three Pieces from the Suite Op.6 (1934-5)

Started when Britten was visiting Vienna on a student travelling scholarship in 1934, the Suite Op.6 offers clear evidence of the young composer’s interest in the more progressive musical tendencies associated with that city – as represented above all by Arnold Schoenberg, whom he had already met in London, and Alban Berg, with whom he hoped to further his studies. In fact, he never got to study with Berg and as he developed his own mature style his interest in Viennese serialism declined. That could explain why, although the Suite had had some success as originally published in four movements, Britten chose towards the end of his life to republish it an abbreviated form, leaving out not only a Moto perpetuo but also an introduction which gives the quasi-serial game away.

As they stand, the Three Pieces hang loosely but effectively together with a comparatively reposeful lullaby set between brilliant caricatures of two of the composer’s favourite forms, a march on the one hand and a waltz on the other. The jerky March, delicately coloured to begin with, features some aggressive double-stopping and a delightful episode where violin harmonics give the impression of a new tune whistled in counterpoint to the march continuing on the piano. The whistled tune reappears, reshaped and recoloured, on the piano in the Lullaby while the violin improvises against it an obbligato expressive enough to provoke a passionate climax in the middle of the piece. The vigorous, boisterously articulated Viennese-style Waltz scarcely touches on the seductive potential of the dance until, at a much slower tempo about half-way through, the piano quietly takes the melody under prolonged trills on the violin. A return to the original tempo and several accelerations bring about an ending even more strident than the beginning.