Music Reviews : Britten’s ‘Heart of the Matter’ Given U.S. Premiere

Benjamin Britten’s “The Heart of the Matter,” for tenor, horn, piano and reader is an odd duck in an unconventional oeuvre .

Essentially an ambitious chamber cantata that spotlights some generally grim, if ultimately optimistic, wartime and war-touched poetry by Edith Sitwell, the piece holds at its center the composer’s “Canticle III,” Opus 55. And it succeeds by the tight integration of mood and text and by maintaining its perspective of stoicism through several mood changes. Musically, its beauties support Sitwell’s words touchingly.

Until this year, the composer’s wish to hold back, if not totally suppress, the work until well after his death (nearly 16 years ago) has kept it from us. Now it will be published by Boosey & Hawkes in 1993.

Called by Britten, “A sequence of music with words of Edith Sitwell,” the 35-year-old piece is reaching the United States this week in twin events by the enterprising Southwest Chamber Music Society, performances constituting the first Albert Dominguez Memorial Concerts.

Sunday afternoon, it was given, on a Holst/Britten/Schubert program in the acoustically grateful sanctuary at All Saints Church in Pasadena; next Sunday at 4 p.m., it will be repeated at Chapman University in Orange.

Jonathan Mack is the clear-voiced, word-sensitive protagonist in these performances; his accomplished colleagues are hornist Jeff von der Schmidt, pianist Leonard Stein and speaker Gail Eichenthal.

Preceding the Britten piece, countertenor Dana Marsh joined his father, Peter Marsh, Southwest’s resident violinist, on this occasion playing the viola, in the elder Marsh’s transcription of Gustav Holst’s handsome Four Songs (originally for soprano and violin).

And to close this program, there was Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet in an enthusiastic, often stylish, sometimes scrappy performance by pianist Stein, violinist Marsh, violist Jan Karlin, cellist Roger Lebow and bassist David Young.