It seems at once both perverse and natural to hold a Michael Tippett retrospective on the coat-tails of the Benjamin Britten centenary. Contemporaries always invite comparison, but to pit one against the other so soon after the flattery and worldwide admiration of 2013 seems almost disrespectful. On the other hand, Tippett (1905-98) and Britten are an appropriate pairing as together they are Janus-faced like the month of January, one looking back, the other forward. If Britten constantly returned to childhood for inspiration, Tippett almost never did and from his youth up seemed to long for and welcome adulthood. Britten depicted the poignancy of youth and (lost) innocence, but Tippett distrusted sentiment and preferred grown-up intellectual debate. In 1920, aged 15, he told his parents h