Oeuvre: The Heart's Assurance

Ian Bostridge's exploration of Britten and Tippett song cycles is overshadowed by a fantastic string quartet in a mixed programme at Aldeburgh.

To those who grew up with Michael Tippett’s music and lived through the later premières, the neglect into which he has fallen and the ill-disguised contempt of many is both puzzling and distressing. The same fate befell both Sibelius and Vaughan Williams in the years following their deaths and now, fifteen years on, there is perhaps just a faint glimmer of a Tippett reappraisal on the horizon.