4 December 2014

Gennady Rozhdestvensky (b. 1931) conducted many first performances of Britten's music in the Soviet Union.

[Interview conducted by letter, translated from the Russian]

Why did you become particularly interested in Britten in the late 1950s and 1960s – as opposed to other English composers such as Bliss, Tippett or Walton?

I'm not sure that in the 1950s I preferred Britten's music to the music of Bliss, Tippett and Walton. I knew their works very little at that time. Today in all probability I still would put Britten in the first place, and Tippett just after him (last year I conducted all his symphonies in Moscow with great pleasure and found it difficult to say which I prefer), and then I'd put Walton and – lastly – Bliss, though I do love his Miracle in the Gorbals.

Was Britten to a degree viewed as a ‘religious’ composer in the Soviet Union of the 1960s, given the Christian content of some of his works such as War Requiem?

I think that nobody in Russia associated Britten's music with religious positions. To do this one needed to know Saint Nicolas or at least Ceremony of Carols, and almost no one knew them.

At the time, would you have compared Britten's War Requiem with Kabalevsky's Requiem or Weinberg's Requiem – nearly contemporaneous works?

To compare Britten's War Requiem with the requiems of Kabalevsky and Weinberg (to tell the truth I don't know the latter, but it's absolutely not important in this case) is like comparing the music of Mozart with that of Koželuh.

In 1963 you presented Britten with a copy of your Prokofiev Pushkiana.

Did Britten ever mention Prokofiev to you? Would you regard these two composers as possessing any important creative or temperamental affinities, e.g., in their stage works or music for children?

I never heard from Britten anything relating to Prokofiev. I think that their worlds are pretty hard to put together.

Other than Shostakovich, with which other Russian composers (nineteenth and twentieth century) would you align Britten?

I do not find any parallels.