So blindingly annoying is
Benjamin Britten's music for Saint Nicolas that Eric Crozier's words being in English and thus comprehensible only makes things worse.
Britten's music, with all its clangorous claptrap sounds, is like it was written by a tinkerer with delusions of grandeur. It bangs, it bongs, it whirrs, and it twirls, but it has about as much life in it as a mechanical nightingale. All the performers except
Peter Pears sound like amateurs doing
Britten a favor while resenting every moment of it.
Pears sounds as plumy and affecting as ever, but at least he has the dubious virtue of seeming to believe that
Britten's music is something more than self-indulgent flapdoodle. Decca's 1955 sound is vivid and immediate, but the reproduction of the liner notes on the inside cover of the album are so tiny as to be unreadable.