Britten’s Holiday Diary

Britten was still a student at the Royal College of Music in London when he started making a name for himself, most particularly for his choral variations A Boy Was Born. He was also developing as a promising pianist under the sympathetic tuition of Arthur Benjamin, and wrote a number of suites for that instrument including in 1934, when he was yet to reach his 21st birthday, his Holiday Diary. A set of four deft character pieces – ‘Early Morning Bathe’, ‘Sailing’, ‘Fun-fair’ and ‘Night’ – they show the young composer’s playful engagement with music by Bartók, Stravinsky and his own teacher.