Reviews and coverage for OBF exec's new book

November 4, 2009

Here are links to press coverage for the new volume of Benjamin Britten diaries edited by the OBF’s John Evans.

1. Advance coverage in the Guardian UK (October 31)

2. Literary Review. “I can think of few other books that have given a more refreshing and enlightening picture of a personality one already thought familiar. Britten’s youthful character leaps off every page, and one feels the whole milieu of artistic and musical London in the 1930s. it is just not a self-portrait of the composer as a young man, but a fascinating glimpse at an all-too-brief period of exciting discovery and innovation”
—Patrick O’Connor

3. Radio coverage via the BBC’s Front Row magazine-style program. Conductor John Eliot Gardiner discusses the Britten volume in a feature that also covers a new volume of T.S. Eliot letters. Listen via the BBCiPlayer (Britten segment starts at approx 15 mimutes in)

4. Daily Telegraph: “Evans has done a superb job of editing these diaries” — Simon Heffer

5. The Independent: “Books on classical music are these days as rare as hens’ teeth. Indeed, only Faber, with its links to Benjamin Britten, features at least one title per season. And for the true Britten aficionado there’s John Evans’s Journeying Boy.” — Liz Thomson, Music Books of the Year

6. Sunday Times (of London): “The year’s most important documentary publication … The diaries offer fascinating insights into his thoughts and musical observations as he enters adulthood – experiencing the loss of his parents, the isolation of his homosexuality and his early success.”— Hugh Canning, Books of the Year

7. Classical Music: “While the salacious detail hunter will relish chat about trips to bath houses with Christopher Isherwood or the muted but charming arrival of Peter Pears, the more serious delight is found in charting the development of the musician … Evans lavishes care and affection on his subject, but never excises some of the more trying elements of the young Britten.” **** —Gavin Plumley