The brilliant New Century Chamber Orchestra starts its season off with a slice of Benjamin Britten, who will have the 100th anniversary of his birth celebrated in 2013. But what’s even better is that soprano Melody Moore joins them for Les Illuminations, the composer’s youthful song cycle based on poems by Arthur Rimbaud. Already, the young composer was advertising his superior sensitivity to word setting, finding melodies that so subtly underline the meaning of the poems. That he got better at it than this is what makes him the standout classical vocal composer of midcentury.
And to complement the youthful composer focus, NCCO adds Britten’s Simple Symphony and Béla Bartók’s not-youthful, but delightful, popular Divertimento, from 1939, five years after the Britten Symphony. Not a concert to make your intellect work hard, and all the better for it. Enjoy.