Orchestral

Benjamin Britten was flying high in 1945: after the triumph of his first opera Peter Grimes that spring and summer, he then rapidly composed his Holy Sonnets of John Donne and his String Quartet No. 2 before writing The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra in December for an educational film. Its first concert performance was given by the (then) Liverpool Philharmonic under Malcolm Sargent in 1946, so it seems appropriate that Vasily Petrenko’s final recording of his 15-year stint as the RLPO’s music director should be of that same work.

It is a piece that poses conductors two challenges: how to sustain longterm momentum through so many so many short variations, and how