8 - Interview with Donald Mitchell

Summary

London, 11 August 2008

The writer and publisher Donald Mitchell cbe (b. 1925) was Britten's friend and associate over many years. For a summary of their relationship, see BBLL 5, pp. 205–6.

Britten's interest in Russia and Russian music is unusual for an English composer. How would you explain it?

It was long-standing, and formed during his childhood. It derived from the overwhelming impact of Russian works on him as a young man and student. It was also part of a wider cultural phenomenon: a passionate, and selective, interest in Russia as a result of the Russian Revolution.

Was Frank Bridge an additional factor?

I don't remember Ben mentioning this, but Russian music must have been a topic they discussed from time to time given Bridge's extraordinarily wide interests and knowledge.

Why did Britten admire Tchaikovsky in particular?

Ben was enormously impressed by Tchaikovsky; his attitude was one of total admiration. He learned so much from him, and he was a constant presence in Ben's creative life. His enthusiasm for Tchaikovsky was quite amazing actually and very unusual for a young composer in this country in the 1930s. It was a passion that lived with him till his dying days. Ben was impressed by his orchestral sound and colour, and by the variety of orchestras involved in a big Tchaikovsky work. He felt that the endless challenges of Tchaikovsky's music – his originality of sound and form – were overlooked in performance, and this influenced how people listened to him: his popularity was therefore an invented and artificial one. Probably later in his life, when he was more aware of himself, Tchaikovsky's homosexuality also played a role.

How far did he admire other Russian composers?

He greatly admired Prokofiev: a vital, and often overlooked, creative influence. He never talked about Musorgsky. With Shostakovich, the Russian aspect was not the vital influence; the relationship might have happened anywhere. It derived from their mutual admiration for each other's music, and their philosophies of being a composer in the twentieth century. That mattered a great deal to Ben. He always had a very strong feeling that music should have a major role to play in the cultural life of a nation, which actually also meant in the politics of a nation.