Singer Catherine Bott salutes the English tenor Peter Pears - so closely linked to the life and career of Benjamin Britten, but a master in many other areas of song too
My parents liked Benjamin Britten’s music, and I was brought up learning and loving every detail of the refinement and wit that tenor Peter Pears brought to the Folk Songs, the heroism of his St Nicholas, above all the tortured otherworldliness of Peter Grimes.
Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten were together for 40 years – they began the English Opera Group and the Aldeburgh Festival, and developed an unsurpassable recital partnership. Pears’s sound doesn’t please everyone, but his artistry is indisputable: Britten loved his conveying ‘every nuance, subtle and never overdone’.
It was Pears's voice that inspired Britten to compose opera, and his spirituality and erudition that contributed so much to works like the Holy Sonnets of John Donne. He would have had a career without Britten – he was a compelling and successful operatic performer long before Peter Grimes – but without Pears we wouldn’t have some of the finest works ever written for tenor.
His art wasn’t just about Britten, of course – Otto Klemperer’s recording of Bach's St Matthew Passion, so unfashionable these days, is dominated (but never overwhelmed) by Pears’s Evangelist. And he loved to sing Dowland, whose songs, he said, were ‘coloured with a gentle silvery sadness’ – a telling image, that.
We named Peter Pears one of the greatest British singers of all time.
A number of composers, other than Britten, wrote songs with Pears in mind, with a number recorded by tenor Robin Tritschler for release by Signum Classics in 2024. We gave the album, Songs for Peter Pears, a glowing review in our August 2024 issue.
Peter Pears in his own words: ‘Peter Grimes is not the most heroic title-role in all opera. He is no Don Giovanni or Otello, and the more glamour is applied to his presentation the further you get from what the composer wanted.’
Greatest recording: Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes Decca 475 7713 (3 discs)