DESCRIPTION:
Benjamin Britten: Lachrymae, reflections on a song of Dowland, for viola and piano, Op.48. Performed by young artists Anastasia Sofina (viola) and Tatiana Dorokhova (piano). Live concert recording on 10 April 2015

Lachrymae was premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival on 20th June 1950 by William Primrose – the violist for whom Britten wrote his piece – and the composer himself.
Often, Britten was finding his inspiration in the music of early English composers, and for this work he turned to the heritage of John Dowland (1563-1626). The material of two of his songs is being used: “Flow my tears” and “If my complaints could passions move” (bits of both are quoted cryptically in the sixth and the final variations, respectively). At the same time the subtitle “Reflections on a song of John Dowland” points out that the piece is not a set of variations but, what the biographer Neil Powell terms “strategy of ingeniously delayed gratification” which Britten uses again in a later Dowland-inspired piece, the Nocturnal for guitar, Op. 70.
The fact that Elizabethan love-songs were expressing love’s sorrows as readily as its joys, is being reflected in the name of Brtten’s work: “Lachrymae” (Latin for “tears”).
The mood of the piece is rather somber, although Britten brings it to a lovely close on the music Dowland uses to set his final lines in “If my complaints could passions move”:
Die shall my hopes, but not my faith
That you that of my fall may hearers be
May here despair, which truly saith,
I was more true to love than love to me.

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