WHOSE idea was this?

The musical world is marking the centenary of Benjamin Britten with waves of commemorative performances.

The issue? What do you put his music with? What suits? What throws light on Britten's achievement? The SCO on Friday came up with a programme, presumably in collaboration with conductor Richard Egarr, that paired Britten with another great Briton, Henry Purcell.

It was a box-office disaster, the scale of which was underlined by the massive attendance, the night before, at a BBC SSO performance which also featured a major piece by Britten.

On paper, the notion of coupling Britten and Purcell might have looked sound. In practice, as irrefutably demonstrated on Friday night, it was a thoroughbred turkey. Hardly anyone came. Ten minutes before the show, I counted about 50 skulls in the audience. The SCO Chorus, not required in the first half, was drafted in to swell the numbers.

Do these things matter? Is it not enough to be doing the good work? Good question, but irrelevant to Friday's show, where Richard Egarr, always good on audience communications, had some hard work to do to counter the impenetrable programme note to Purcell's Fairy Queen and the total absence of an explanatory note on Purcell's Catches; though it was unfortunate that Egarr had to resort to a bit of smut in his chat.

Britten's Prelude and Fugue, Hymn to the Virgin, and Part's In Memoriam Cantus were OK, but the Dances from Britten's Gloriana were derivative nonentities, while Purcell's My Heart is Inditing was unconvincingly sung by the chorus. Bitty and batty, despite some exceptional playing, the programme did not work.

HHH