Birtwistle: Punch and Judy

It's almost 40 years since the 1968 premiere of Punch and Judy, celebrated in legend as a rude gesture in the face of Aldeburgh primness, and with hindsight as one of the finest achievements... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

Release Date: 14th May 2007
Catalogue No: NMCD138
Label: NMC
Length: 1 hour 43 minutes

Gramophone Awards

1980

Winner - Contemporary

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Birtwistle: Punch and Judy

Work length1:43:21

$25.00

$30.00

Stephen Roberts (baritone), David Wilson-Johnson (bass), Jan DeGaetani (mezzo-soprano), Philip Langridge (tenor), John Tomlinson (bass), Phyllis Bryn-Julson (soprano)
London Sinfonietta
David Atherton

Prologue

Track length4:36

$1.00

$1.20

Homage to Judy

Track length7:40

$2.00

$2.40

Resolve I

Track length1:09

$1.00

$1.20

Passion Chorale I

Track length2:13

$1.00

$1.20

Toccata I B

Track length5:19

$1.00

$1.20

Pretty Polly's Rhapsody I

Track length2:24

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$1.20

Sinfonia

Track length8:13

$2.00

$2.40

War-Cry

Track length4:58

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Toccata II B

Track length5:30

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Pretty Polly's Rhapsody II

Track length6:02

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Roundel: 1st movement

Track length6:31

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Recitative and Passion Aria II

Track length3:35

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Proclamation III

Track length7:46

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Nightmare

Track length2:18

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Tarot-Game: 1st Draw

Track length5:29

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Quartet

Track length12:35

$3.00

$3.60

Toccata III A

Track length3:18

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Melodrama IV

Track length3:19

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Death March

Track length3:37

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Triumph

Track length6:49

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Punch and Judy elaborates the traditional puppet-play into an opera of stylised violence and ritual. While the simplicity of the children’s entertainment is retained in the opera by the characters—familiar and puppet-like—by the invented ‘nursery-rhymes’ of the libretto, and by the waltzes, lullabies and serenades of the music, the tragi-comic actions of a homicidal puppet are raised almost to the status of myth as Punch murders Judy over and over again.

Reviews

2010

It's almost 40 years since the 1968 premiere of Punch and Judy, celebrated in legend as a rude gesture in the face of Aldeburgh primness, and with hindsight as one of the finest achievements by Britten's most gifted British successor in the field of opera composition.
Good though it would be to have a new performance, the chances of something recent outclassing this 1979 version are remote. David Atherton has total empathy with the tricky blend of short numbers and culminative intensity, and draws brilliantly polished and characterful playing from the London Sinfonietta. The dream cast is headed by Stephen Roberts's stunning portrayal of Mr Punch as a demented Oxbridge choral scholar, and by David Wilson- Johnson's suave, sinister Master of Ceremonies, while Philip Langridge and John Tomlinson make telling contributions. This, it need hardly be said, is not 'slice of life' opera, but the characters are animated and individualised, as they should be, through music which fits Stephen Pruslin's hilariously concise word-games like a glove. And if all this weren't enough, the fabulous Phyllis Bryn-Julson comes into her own in the final stages, a succession of vivid, poignant musical moments which Birtwistle has never bettered. And given NMC's no-deletion policy, this classic set is here to stay. No collection should be without it.

September 2007

David Atherton has total empathy with the tricky blend of short numbers and culminative intensity, and draws brilliantly polished and characterful playing from the London Sinfonietta. The dream cast is headed by Stephen Roberts's stunning portrayal of Mr Punch as a demented Oxbridge choral scholar, and by David Wilson-Johnson's suave, sinister Master of Ceremonies, while Philip Langridge and John Tomlinson make telling contributions.

This brilliantly sung and played account has a gripping luridness that makes it hard to imagine how the work—a 1960s expressionist masterpiece—could be done differently, never mind better. Setting a libretto of manic intellectuality by Stephen Pruslin, the
opera moves with an implacable, raucous energy that is unique

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