All in all, Pears/Procter is probably the best version I have heard so far, although I do like Mark Padmore / Iestin Davies very much, mainly for Padmore's part, which is dramatically just perfect, and also for their strange, alien, other-worldly God, who sounds very post-modern. Pears/Procter's God is also other-worldly, in a different way, and Britten playing piano makes it much more present; shame that Pears is not perfectly convincing all the time as Padmore is. The most disappointing was Pears/Baker version, I hate to say; as much as I love Dame Janet, these two voices just don't work well together here. Their God has too much of the other two protagonists; "too human", I would say... Well maybe they have (or had) a point after all.
The text is available here - and it's really best heard with the text in hand of course. Listening to it again and again, I thought that I have always assumed that God expected Abraham to comply with His stated will -- to sacrifice Isaac unquestioningly, as the Patriarch was ready to do. But what if it was the other way round? What if God asked Abraham to kill his "dear darling" hoping that Abraham will see the absurdity of the request and show mercy towards Isaac? And then when God saw that this was not going to happen, He had to cancel it all, and to send an emergency sacrificial animal to Abraham; the imbecile was going literally to kill his son indeed... I guess this isn't impossible; after all, He desires "not sacrifice but mercy"...
And on the other hand, the entire piece reminds me of Roublev's Trinity, that perfect harmony of love / will, between God (Holy Spirit), Abraham (Father) and Isaac (Son), even to and beyond the absurd... This is admirable, and so beautiful that actually this is THE reason why I will return again and again to this music.
