DESCRIPTION:
A radio broadcast of a recital of Benjamin Britten & Peter Pears at RHK (or RTHK nowaday) Studio in Hong Kong on 6 February 1956.
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Franz Joseph Haydn:
'The Sailor's Song', 'Sympathy', from 'English Canzonettas II', Hob. XXVIa

Franz Schubert:
Liebesbotschaft, D. 957
Gesänge des Harfners I, D. 478

Robert Schumann:
Die Mondnacht, Op. 39, No. 5

Benjamin Britten:
Winter Words, Op. 52,
No. 1, 'At Day-close in November';
No. 4, 'The Little Old Table';
No. 5, 'The Choirmaster's Burial';
No. 6, 'Proud Songsters'

Traditional (arr. Britten):
Down by the Salley Gardens
The Ploughboy

Peter Pears, tenor
Benjamin Britten, piano accompaniment
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A brief description of the 1956 Britten-Pears visit to Hong Kong is in the video, and as below (The following text is adapted from the Fine Music, November 2013):
During their six days in the colony the duo performed four times. Arriving from Singapore on 2 February with their close friends, Prince and Princess von Hesse, they were greeted at the airport by press as well as the local presenter, an unusual American entrepreneur named Harry Odell, who had been key to the development of Hong Kong's classical music culture. They were soon whisked away to the Peak to stay with the Princess' brother, a director of Jardine Matheson.

They performed for the public the next day, 3 February, at the improbable hour of 9:30 pm, at the Empire (later State) Theatre, a cinema on King's Road in North Point, seating 1,300. Still a decade before Hong Kong's first concert hall was constructed at
City Hall (spearheaded by the same Harry Odell), there was simply nowhere else large enough. News photographs show Governor and Lady Chatham appearing in formal attire; the audience stood for their entrance. Later, they also rose multiple times for Britten and Pears, according to the press: 'Governor among big gathering...The audience gave Pears and Britten a terrific ovation and drew
five encores' (South China Morning Post). 'They clamoured for more' (Hong Kong Tiger Standard). 'Not only is Mr. Pears a tenor singer of great beauty...not only is Mr. Britten a composer of startling originality...but both artists showed a skill in building the programme which could not have been bettered' (China Mail).

Monday, 6 February, was the RHK broadcast recital; on the same day Britten found time to travel to the New Territories to gaze across the border at China. 7 February included a private recital of Schumann's Dichterliebe, the Governor again present, at the home of an 'unpleasant shipping magnate', in Britten's words.

Of all Hong Kong performances, the radio broadcast was the most important, reaching the widest listener base, especially the newly ascendant middle-class and musically-literate students who might not have afforded tickets to the public recital. Such listeners would already have been primed to appreciate music through the burgeoning classical and education outlets, as well as topical broadcasts leading up to the Britten-Pears visit: the previous week, a widely publicized prime time show focusing on Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra immediately followed the broadcast of Hong Kong University's Congregration speeches by the Governor and others.

Anyone knowing Britten's artistic penchant for subtlety might imagine a knowing smile in deciding his radio programme of 6 February. The Haydn Canzonettes, for example, were sung in the original language; that is, in English, written during that Austrian composer's own tour to London, a city considered by the continent in 1794 to be more brash economic upstart than arts hub. (The words, incidentally, were written by Haydn's English girlfriend.) Wasn't Haydn's English tour similar to Britten's visit to Hong Kong?

Even more subversive could be the final song, one of Britten's settings, The Ploughboy, introduced by Pears as the 'song of the politician who rose too quickly for the 18th century'. Included in the text are such class- and politics-conscious phrases as 'I'll buy votes at elections, but, when I've made the pelf, I'll stand poll for the parliament, and then vote in myself.' (There was a similar jab at politicians with the fifth and final encore of the public recital, Britten's arrangement of Oliver Cromwell, which ends with the words 'If you want any more you can sing it yourself'.)