By Jorge Casuso

March 28, 2013 -- It was a storied party house, and for one whirlwind year it housed some of the most notorious British and American artists of the 20th century, among them its chief tenants, composer Benjamin Britten and his lover, tenor Peter Pears.

Santa Monica's Jacaranda will celebrate Benjamin Britten’s Centenary by focusing on the busy, intoxicating year of 1939 at February House, the residence in Brooklyn that hosted a slew of luminaries of music and letters. They included British poet W.H. Auden, writers Jane and Paul Bowles (author of "The Sheltering Sky"), eminent American composers Aaron Copeland, Virgil Thompson and Leonard Bernstein, as well as Gypsy Rose Lee, Lotte Lenya and George Balanchine.

The program for the three-concert celebration starting April 7 -- which Jacaranda officials promise will evoke the "creative and social nexus" that coalesced at 7 Middagh Street -- will feature works by Britten, as well as Thompson, Copeland, Bowles and gamelan expert Colin McPhee.

The Britten works featured in the April 7 concert include the U.S. debut of the "belatedly published" McPhee arrangement for two pianos of Britten’s “Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge” for string orchestra, according to concert organizers, as well as the "fiercely energetic" “Overture: Paul Bunyan” that was not used in the ill-fated Broadway-bound operetta and remained in a duo-piano version until orchestrated for the 1977 revival of the show.

The April 7 program also will include a performance of Paul Bowles' Sonata for Clarinet and Oboe, written when the would-be novelist was studying composition with Copeland. The unusually paired duet will be played by clarinetist Eric Jacobs, who will make his Carnegie Hall debut in April playing John Adams’ clarinet concerto “Gnarly Buttons” and oboist Keve Wilson, a member of the internationally acclaimed and Grammy-nominated Absolute Ensemble.

In addition, the opening concert will include performances of Thomson's “Persistently Pastoral: A Portrait of Aaron Copland” and “Souvenir: A Portrait of Paul Bowles," as well as Copland's “Danzon Cubano.”

On April 27, Jacaranda will stage a performance of Britten's “Curlew River,” an all-male chamber opera (1963) based on Sumidagawa, the most famous drama of the classical Japanese Noh theater, and intended for performance in a church. The opera's first known Los Angeles performance will feature tenor Steven Tharp in the lead role and members of the Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus.

"Curlew River" is "considered by many to be among Britten’s finest and most emotionally cathartic operas," Jacaranda officials said.

Jacaranda’s Britten celebration, as well as its current season, will conclude on June 1 with “Young Apollo: God of Music, Poetry and Healing,” which will survey Britten's music from four piano pieces, written between 1925 and 1963, to his last major work, the Third String Quartet from 1976.

The oncert will open with “Suite for Violin and Piano,” Op. 6, which "throws all caution to the wind as only a 22-year old show off can do," and concludes with two pieces for string ensemble and soloists -- Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings and the posthumously published “Young Apollo,” a "virtually unknown work of uncommon brilliance for piano solo, string quartet and strings," according to concert organizers.