Twenty Essential Works By Britain's Greatest Composer

Benjamin Britten was a twentieth Century musical giant. He'd have been 100 years old this year so Radio 3 spent the weekend in Suffolk celebrating his centenary. Twenty works by the composer were performed by choirs, ensembles and soloists including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Kuss Quartet, Alan Oke, Ben Johnson, Ensemble 360 and hundreds of voices, from local groups and professional choirs like the BBC Singers. It was spectacular. Listen to all the works performed, in full, on the Radio 3 web site.

1. Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia

The four Sea Interludes - 'Dawn', 'Sunday Morning', 'Moonlight' and 'The Storm' - are scene changes from Britten's Suffolk murder drama 'Peter Grimes'. Gorgeous musical links, filler. Spectacular filler. Listen to the four Interludes, plus the gorgeous Passacaglia, here.

2. Cello Suite No. 2

The story of Britten and Russian cello wizard Msistlav Rostropovich began in 1960. Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto was getting its London première. Shostakovich was there and he'd invited Benjamin Britten to sit with him, although they'd never met before, and after the performance Shostakovich introduced Britten to his soloist, Rostropovich... Britten's second Cello Suite was composed in 1967 and Rostropovich gave the première in June 1968 at Britten's Suffolk concert hall in Snape. Listen to the work, played by Philip Higham, here.

3. Spring Symphony

It's a riff on a series of songs by Mahler called 'Das Lied von der Erde' ('The Song of the Earth') and it includes verse by WH Auden as well as thirteen other poets, going back to the Sixteenth Cenury. Listen here.

4. Cantata Academica

The Cantata was commissioned by a Swiss University, so Britten wrote out the text on the pages of his old school German exercise book. He later used the same book to plan his War Requiem. Listen here.

5. Albert Herring

It's like Alban Berg done by Ealing Studios. A modernist opera with a cast of characters with names like Florence Pike, Lady Billows and, of course, Albert Herring. There's a pair of characters named Sid and Nancy. No, not that Sid and Nancy. Listen to the whole opera here.

6. String Quartet No. 1

1941. Britten and Pears are staying with British friends in Los Angeles. Britten's first Quartet was a commission from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, a big patron of chamber music who funded works by twentieth Century greats like Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. It's sophisticated work from a mature composer. Listen here.

7. Welcome Ode

It's jolly and Royal (it was written for the Silver Jubilee of 1977) and life-affirming. School choirs, brass, celebratory words. And perhaps not the work you'd expect to Britten to have composed after his brooding third Quartet. Listen here.

8. Soirées Musicales

A hit, a great big hit. And one of the composer's first. Britten adapted some big tunes from opera composer Rossini, it was put on at The BBC Proms in 1937 and the rest is history. It's got a charming, pre-war vibe. Warm and, of course, those tunes. Listen here.

9. String Quartet No. 2

An authentic masterpiece of the twentieth Century, standing alongside quartets by Bartok and Shostakovich. Britten wrote this one to mark the 250th anniversary of Purcell's birth and it was first performed at the Wigmore Hall on the composer's 32nd birthday. Listen here.

10. Three Divertimenti

From 1936, the same year as his chart-topper 'Soirées Musicales', but poorly received on first performance. Britten, chronically insecure about his own work, never allowed them to be published and they weren't heard again until years after his death. Listen here.

11. A Hymn to the Virgin

You're sixteen. You're still at school, getting started as a composer. You write some choral music. It becomes one of your biggest hits. That's the story of 'A Hymn to the Virgin', performed constantly, around the world, to this day. A simple and joyful work that contributed directly to Britten's fame. Listen here.

12. Quartet No. 3

It's about Venice and death (the final instruction written in the score is 'dying away'). It's an intimate and melancholy work and the final movement might make you cry. It's one of Britten's very last works, written when he was already very ill. It's one of his essential compositions. Listen to it here.

13. Choral Dances from Gloriana

'Gloriana' was a tricky work, an opera written for Queen Elizabeth's coronation but not quite the uncomplicated hymn of praise everyone was expecting. Shelved as a result. But the opera was full of dance tunes so Britten clipped these lovely pieces from Act two. Job done. Listen here.

14. Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Vittoria

Musicians often say that Britten had an uncanny ability to inhabit almost any instrument, somehow knowing its every quirk without being a regular player. This work is the only one he wrote for solo organ. And it's a gem. Listen here.

15. Rejoice in the Lamb

Christopher Smart wrote his 'Jubilate Agno' while confined to St Luke's asylum for the insane in Bethnal Green, between 1759 and 1763, but it wasn't published until the 1930s, when Britten discovered it and set an English translation to music. It was an unlikely text to choose - obscure and full of nonsense phrases - but the resulting work is charming and powerful. Listen here.

16. Hymn to St Cecilia

Britten wrote this work, setting words provided by his friend WH Auden, while living in the USA during World War II. US customs inspectors feared it might be a coded message and confiscated it before he boarded a ship for Southampton. He wrote it out again during the voyage. British inspectors confiscated it again. Its first performance in Britain was on BBC Radio on St Cecilia's Day, 1942. Listen here.

17. The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

British children brought up in the decades after World War II know this work rather well. A mainstay of British music education for decades and still played and performed regularly. It provides a tuneful (and complete) tour of the orchestra, section by section, making artful use of music by Britten's idol Henry Purcell. This performance, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Gourlay with BBC Children's TV star Johny Pitts narrating, is sure to become definitive. Listen here.

18. Noye's Fludde

It's the Noah story. A riotous, joyful, genuinely magical nativity play of a work, performed in this case, in Lowestoft, Britten's birthplace. Irresistible stuff (and BBC Radio 4's Zeb Soanes is God). Enjoy. Listen here.

19. A Shepherd's Carol

It's got a text by WH Auden. It was broadcast on BBC radio at Christmas in 1944. Imagine this glorious sound, in a darkened living room in a suburb of a British city five years into what must have seemed like a war without end. Listen here.

20. St Nicolas

This gorgeous choral piece - which tells the story of Saint Nicolas - was written to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his partner's school Lancing College. It makes ingenious use of the musical resources available to the school: a mixed school choir, a tenor soloist, boy soloists, strings, piano duet, organ and percussion. Listen here.