DESCRIPTION:
Britten: Mazurka Elegiaca, Op. 23, No. 2
Clifford Curzon and Benjamin Britten (pianists)

Recorded January 5, 1944, probably at Decca's West Hampstead Studios, London, on Decca matrices AR8012 and AR8013. Issued as Decca K 1118 (and in automatic sequence as AK 1117/18) in April, 1945. On the same day, Curzon and Britten recorded the companion piece in Britten's Opus 23, his "Introduction and Rondo alla Burlesca," which I have uploaded separately. In the USA the two records containing both pieces were imported and sold as an album, EDA-17. The cover for this album is shown in the video.

The Mazurka Elegiaca in F minor was written during the summer of 1941, a year after its companion piece, while Britten was staying with the husband-and-wife piano duo team of Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertston in Escondido, California. It was the result of a commission from his publisher, Ralph Hawkes, for a piano piece to be included in a memorial volume for the great Polish pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski, who had died on June 29, 1941. Due to an error in the transmission of the cable, which asked for "two piano pieces" (the pluralizing "s" was omitted from "pieces"), Britten interpreted it as meaning one piece for two pianos rather than two pieces for one piano!

To download a higher-quality audio file of this recording, please visit my blog, The Shellackophile - http://shellackophile.blogspot.com - where this and many other vintage recordings may be downloaded.