Serenade for Tenor, Saxophone and Orchestra (“My Dear Benjamin”)

Serenade for Tenor, Saxophone and Orchestra, also known as 'My Dear Benjamin', is a musical composition by Lyle Chan.

This orchestral song cycle forms a section within Chan's larger work Voices and Instruments. Its text is drawn from letters between English composer Benjamin Britten and his first romantic interest, Wulff Scherchen.

Wulff Scherchen was a young German man. Though they first met in Siena, Italy when Britten was 20 and Scherchen nearly 14, the romantic friendship did not begin until four years later when Scherchen had started living in Cambridge.

This relationship hit a crisis when World War II broke out and Scherchen was incarcerated as an enemy alien. He was deported to a Prisoner of War camp in Canada (Camp 23).

Throuhgout the relationship, Britten and Scherchen corresponded. "The one person constantly in my thoughts and on my mind without fail was you. No one else occupied my heart, my mind or my body,” wrote Scherchen to Britten in 1941.

Lyle Chan discovered this story via the book and film Britten's Children by John Bridcut. Chan met Scherchen after learning that he was alive at the age of 95 and living in northern New South Wales with his wife of over 70 years under the name John Woolford, which he had assumed after his release from enemy alien internment in 1941.

Scherchen consented to have these letters turned into a song cycle. Chan theorized that Britten's own works contain a coded symbol of Scherchen, the saxophone, and so this instrument was given a solo role.

The work was commissioned by Queensland Symphony Orchestra and premiered at the 2016 Brisbane Festival on 22 September 2016. Scherchen passed away in August 2016 at the age of 96, six weeks before the concert, and the concert was dedicated to his memory.

Performing the premiere were tenor Andrew Goodwin, saxophonist Michael Duke and the conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra for the occasion was noted Britten biographer Paul Kildea.

Both Arts Hub and The AU Review included the song cycle in their Top Ten shows at the 2016 Brisbane Festival.

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