This recording’s juxtaposition of Britten’s and Shostakovich’s gazes towards Michelangelo is a felicitous choice: it allows us to compare the composers, distinguish them and appreciate their peculiarities, and understand the profound reasons underlying their passion for these poems.

Michelangelo often writes about love, and it is this theme that Benjamin Britten favours in his 7 Sonnets, written whilst in the United States at the beginning of the Second World War having decided to leave England. He would only return home in 1942, shortly before this work’s premiere on 23 September at London’s Wigmore Hall. The dedication reiterates the work’s private significance: To Peter. Peter Pears was the composer’s favourite tenor interpreter of his own music and the man with whom he formed a lasting love affair. Britten, in a choice that would remain unique in his oeuvre, sets Michelangelo’s original Italian.

Shostakovich’s first inspiration for his Suite on Verses of Michelangelo can be traced to his hearing Britten’s 7 Sonnets sung by Peter Pears in Moscow in 1966. Shostakovich, who dedicated his work to his wife Irina Antonovna, was so impressed with Britten’s settings that he immediately sought out Michelangelo’s verses in Russian translation (by Avram Efros). He chose eleven of the sonnets, adding a title of his own to each and rearranging them in a personal sequence. The first performance took place on 23 January 1975, seven months before the composer’s death. The eleven sonnets contain different cues, both personal and political, from Michelangelo’s life, and in the musical settings one hears a reference to Shostakovich’s own condition as an artist in a conflictual relationship with authority.