A quartet of concerts ended a marvellous, fulfilling and enjoyable Aldeburgh Festival

Daniel Kidane: Aloud - Nathan Amaral, Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Karabits - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Thea Musgrave: Rorate coeli, Britten: A.M.D.G., Palestrina: Rorate coeli, Daniel Kidane: The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash, Schoenberg: Friede auf Erden, Poulenc: Figure humaine; BBC Singers, Owain Park; Snape Maltings

Britten: Winter Words, Imogen Holst: Weathers, Little think’st at thou, poore flower, Four Songs, Daniel Kidane: Songs of Illumination; Britten: Folksong arrangements; Nick Pritchard, Ian Tindale; Jubilee Hall

Britten: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Daniel Kidane: Aloud, Reinhold Glière: The Zaporozhy Cossacks, Shostakovich: Symphony No.9; Nathan Amaral, Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Karabits; Snape Maltings

Britten: Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge, Elgar: Quintet in A minor for piano and string quartet; Allan Clayton, Antonio Pappano, London Symphony Orchestra principals: Benjamin Gilmore /Julián Gil Rodríguez (violins), Elvind Ringstad (viola), David Cohen (cello); Snape Maltings

Berlioz: Overture to Le corsaire; Boulez: Mémoriale, Debussy: Images’, Book II, orch. Colin Matthews, Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique; London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano; Snape Maltings
Reviewed by Tony Cooper: 26-29 June 2025

From the BBC Singers in Britten & Schoenberg, to the RCM Symphony Orchestra on top form, a brace of terrific tenors, plus Berlioz & Boulez from the LSO

A marvellous person! A marvellous composer! When BBC’s Tom Service asked the revered Scottish composer, Thea Musgrave (now in her 97th year) her view of being a woman composer, she replied: ‘Yes, I am a woman; I am a composer, too. But rarely at the same time.’ She admits that pursuing music can be a difficult career and her advice to young composers: ‘Don't do it, unless you need to. And if you do, enjoy every minute of it.’ [see Robert's 90th birthday interview with her].

I think it’s fair to say that Musgrave has enjoyed every minute of her chosen profession and most probably influenced other composers along the way: Judith Weir, for one, who acknowledges Musgrave as a significant influence on her own compositional style while Musgrave, in turn, acknowledges the influence of such luminous composers as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Berg in her early development.

I always enjoy Musgrave’s work and it was in 1964 when I first encountered her music when the 1964 Norfolk & Norwich Triennial Festival commissioned The Five Ages of Man, a cantata she wrote for soprano, chorus and orchestra, premièred by the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra and the Norwich Philharmonic Chorus in St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, conducted by Charles Mackerras. The text comes from Hesiod’s Works and Ways, a Greek version of the story of the decline and fall of man.

However, getting up to date, in January last year I enjoyed a rare and captivating production by Oper Leipzig of Mary, Queen of Scots [see Tony's review], the first of four operas Musgrave wrote focusing on historical figures - the others being Harriet, the Woman Called Moses (1985), Simón Bolívar (1995) and Pontalba (2003).

Thea Musgrave: Rorate Coeli - BBC Singers, Owain Park - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Now reunited with Musgrave at Aldeburgh, I thoroughly enjoyed Rorate coeli, the opening work in the BBC Singers’ concert at Snape Maltings Concert Hall, conducted by Owain Park - Thursday 26 June. I was truly soaking up the atmosphere, intensity and poignancy of the piece as much as I did with Mary, Queen of Scots. Musgrave ended with an exultant, jubilant and dramatic setting of the ‘Gloria’ while Palestrina’s setting of the same work, heard in the same programme, was equally as dramatic offering an extended ‘Alleluia’ to bring the work to a thoughtful and dignified close.

First performed by the Thomas Tallis Society Choir in St Alfege Church, Greenwich (designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor) Musgrave’s Rorate coeli - written in 1973 in response to a commission from the National Federation of Music Societies of Great Britain (now known as Making Music) - comprises a setting of two interleaved poems by the well-known Scottish poet, William Dunbar (written circa 1500): one speaks of the Nativity; the other, the Resurrection.

The programme continued apace with a rare outing of Britten’s A.M.D.G. - settings of poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins written in the summer of 1939 while the composer was resident in the United States of America. The title A.M.D.G. relates to the pious inscription Ad majoram Dei gloria / For the greater glory of God, often placed at the head of a piece of work. With Britten’s intricate and flowing score coupled with Hopkins’ text it was a match made in heaven!

The second half of the programme was punctuated by Daniel Kidane’s The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash, a short seven-minute work commissioned by the Huddersfield Choral Society, set to a text by Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, written during the world pandemic reminding one of that dark, dismal and desperate time.

The work also featured a piano (played by Richard Peace, a well-known organist and conductor with a strong association with the Royal Choral Society) adding so much pleasure to a serene and sensitive work especially the bars written in the higher register keys emulating the sweetness and purity of birdsong highlighting Nature in its infinite and all-consuming glory carrying on with life with no regard to the misery of Man!

The concert continued with Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden (‘Peace on Earth’), premièred in 1911 and based on a poem by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer exploring the themes of peace and reconciliation. Boy O boy, don’t we need to ponder this philosophy right now! The work’s most notable for being one of Schoenberg’s last compositions written in the late romantic tonal style foreshadowing his later atonal works.

The concert lovingly concluded with a rewarding performance of Poulenc’s Figure humaine, a cantata he wrote for double-mixed choir composed in 1943 using texts from Paul Éluard including his famous poem ‘Liberté’ written during the Nazi occupation of France. In 1945, the Royal Air Force scattered thousands of copies of the poem over the occupied country as a morale-boosting exercise. The work premièred in London in English by the BBC in 1945 and was first performed in French in 1946 in Brussels followed by Paris on 22 May 1947. Vive la France!

A couple of concerts on Friday 27 June were simply smashing. The music of Imogen Holst was paramount in Nick Pritchard’s morning recital held in Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall while the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra held court in Snape Maltings Concert Hall for the evening concert.

Ian Tindale, Nick Pritchard - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

This was Pritchard’s second visit to Aldeburgh Festival as last year he delivered a memorable performance in the title-role of Britten’s cantata, Saint Nicholas, in Snape Maltings with the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Jessica Cottis [see Tony's review]. He also joined soprano Gweneth Ann Rand and pianist Allyson Devenish to perform a Messiaen song cycle in the same festival.

Well-dressed, suave-looking and attentive, Pritchard took to the stage of Jubilee Hall together with his accompanist, Ian Tindale, to a large round of applause. They met at the Royal College of Music in 2012 (Britten’s alma mater) and have been together since. How lovely!

And how lovely their programme, too, featuring three works by Imogen Holst - Weathers, Little think’st at thou, poore flower and Four Songs - so eloquently sung by Pritchard while in Britten’s song-cycle Winter Words (set to eight poems by Thomas Hardy), Pritchard’s renderings of ‘Midnight on the Great Western’ (the music line harbouring a train travelling on bumpy and uneven racks), ‘The choirmaster’s burial’ (featuring the hymn tune ‘Mount Ephraim’) and ‘The little old table’ (creaky, uneven and weathered over generations) were so admirably sung with Pritchard majestically capturing the essence and beauty of Britten’s gentle and tender writing coupled with Hardy’s sensitive and inspiring writing.

Daniel Kidane’s Songs of Illumination (written in 2018 and set to a text by William Blake) more than illuminated the proceedings of this wonderful song recital while Britten’s folksong arrangements of such classics as ‘The Ploughboy’, ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ and ‘Sally in our alley’ were regally sung and ‘acted’ by Pritchard in a most relaxed and casual manner to the utter delight of a full and admiring house. They loved him and, indeed, loved him even more when he encored ‘The Salley Gardens’ set to a text (tearing at the heart strings!) by William Butler Yeats.

Conducted by Kirill Karabits, the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra got off to a brilliant start to their programme with a strong and authoritative performance of Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes while Daniel Kidane’s violin concerto Aloud, written for German-born violinist, Julia Fischer, premièred in March 2024 at the Royal Festival Hall by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner, followed.

As a former violinist, Kidane harboured the idea of writing something lively and energetic for his chosen instrument for some time therefore his rhythmic, percussive and vigorously written violin concerto, vigorously played, too, by Brazilian-born violinist, Nathan Amaral, who delivered the goods in no uncertain manner offering an impeccable and gifted performance. Over the course of its composition, Kidane became troubled by world events particularly the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine - countries with which he has family ties. The composer’s half Russian and his partner is Ukrainian.

A veiled form of the old Ukrainian Cossack folksong ‘Black Crow’ is appropriately incorporated within the work. It’s heard in the opening bars thereby becoming the ‘kernel’ of the piece carrying the message of the struggle for life as well as an energetic musical opposition to the scourge, pity and wastefulness of war.

Interestingly, the song speaks of a crow circling over an injured Cossack. He calls out to the bird: ‘Why are you circling over me? Your prey will always elude you. Black crow, I’m not yours. I’m not ready to die.’ And that fighting spirit and energy is clearly represented in the piece. The folksong is not only touching but it’s fierce, too, reminding one that the suffering of ordinary people is often drowned by political rhetoric.

Interestingly, Kidane doesn’t refer to it as a ‘violin concerto’ commenting that it’s more of a dialogue between orchestra and violinist coming together at times or coinciding in different realms or strata. Apropos how the violin and orchestra interact, I think it’s fair to say that at some points they complement each while often they’re heard battling and arguing between and against themselves.

In an adventurous piece of programming, Kidane’s violin concerto was followed by Reinhold Glière’s The Zaporozhy Cossacks, a symphonic poem celebrated for its depiction of Ukrainian national themes. In fact, the work’s a well-known three-act comic opera with spoken dialogue composed by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky while its orchestration was revised by Glière (born Kiev, 1874) and Heorhiy Maiboroda in 1921.

Dating from 1675, the story relates to the Ukrainian Cossacks rejecting the Ottoman Sultan’s demands for tribute thus becoming a simple matter of the Ukrainians resisting foreign intervention and oppression. Food for thought! Therefore, a strong scenario was well complemented by Glière’s strong and forceful writing offering the spirited (and so talented) young bloods of the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra (so well led by ‘whoever’) an opportunity to show off. And that’s what they did with every section of the orchestra having a say in the matter in what turned out to be a truly memorable and, indeed, an energetic performance that gained favour with the audience.

If Glière’s work, therefore, was ‘all guns blazing’ the same could be said of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.9 in E flat major, premièred on 3 November 1945 in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, marking the end of a lovely day trip to the Suffolk coast by members of the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra. I hope they found time for fish-and-chips out of the paper!

The symphony was nominated for the Stalin Prize in 1946 but did not win. By order of Glavrepertkom (the central censorship board) the work was banned on 14 February 1948 in Shostakovich’s second denunciation by Stalin together with some of his other works. It was totally removed from the list in the summer of 1955 by the totalitarian Russian state. Things have only marginally approved, I feel.

When Britten became President of the Norfolk & Norwich Music Club in the spring of 1951, now branded Norwich Chamber Music currently thriving under the artistic direction of Richard Wigmore, he remained in that position until shortly before his death in 1976.

Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge - Allan Clayton, Antonio Pappano, members of LSO - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

To mark the occasion of his appointment, he accompanied Peter Pears in a song recital at the Assembly House, Norwich, on 27 October 1951 in a programme which included the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo which he wrote in 1940 for Pears who singled it out as one of the greatest works that Britten had written for him. This salutary performance became my first introduction to this most satisfying, thoughtful and most loving work greatly influenced, of course, by the Italian painter and poet, Michelangelo. I never tire of it.

Therefore, I found it so exciting and refreshing hearing the sonnets once more so thoughtfully sung by the ‘man-of-the-moment’ Allan Clayton accompanied by Antonio Pappano on piano, stamping the penultimate day of Aldeburgh Festival’s 76th edition in Snape Maltings Concert Hall (Saturday 28 June) with sonnets XXX ‘Veggio co' bei vostri occhi un dolce lume’ (‘I see through your lovely eyes a sweet light’) and XXXVIII ‘Rendete agli occhi miei, o fonte o fiume’ (‘Give back to my eyes, o fountains and rivers’) catching and keeping my attention.

If Britten’s Seven Sonnets speaks of beauty and love the companion piece in the programme, Vaughan Williams’ song cycle, On Wenlock Edge, composed in 1909 to six poems from AE Housman’s 1896 collection, A Shropshire Lad, speaks of sadness and loss. Premièred in London’s Aeolian Hall on 15 November 1909, the performers numbered Gervase Elwes (tenor), Frederick Kiddle (piano) and the Schwiller String Quartet.

On this occasion, the performers were Allan Clayton with Antonio Pappano at the keyboard in league with four principal players from the London Symphony Orchestra: Benjamin Gilmore / Julián Gil Rodríguez (violins), Elvind Ringstad (viola) and David Cohen (cello).

Clayton was exemplary in his performance truly capturing, I feel, the wisdom and spirit of Vaughan Williams and Housman’s writing right from the work’s exuberant opening piece ‘On Wenlock Edge’ to the very sad end with ‘Clun’, a town in Shropshire providing a sense of peace and tranquillity in contrast to the more dramatic poem preceding it, ‘Bredon Hill’.

A truly moving and thoughtful work exploring the theme of the passage of time, the music’s strikingly known for its evocative atmosphere not only capturing both the ethereal beauty and melancholy of Housman's poetry but also capturing the vivid imagery of the beautiful Shropshire landscape.

Ending a most satisfying and gratifying concert fell to Elgar’s Quintet in A minor for piano and string quartet (dedicated to Ernest Newman, music critic of the Manchester Guardian) with Pappano and the LSO principals once more to the fore delighting a packed house with this three-movement 45-minute work (the longest of Elgar’s chamber works) first performed on 21 May 1919 by pianist William Murdoch, violinists Albert Sammons and WH Reed, violist Raymond Jeremy and cellist Felix Salmond.

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival ended in a grand and exuberant style (Sunday, 29 June) featuring a couple of works by ‘boisterous’ Berlioz. His music commanded the stage with performances of the overture to Le corsaire and Symphonie fantastique, one of his most popular and celebrated works, played with so much momentum and passion by the London Symphony Orchestra under Antonio Pappano. I hope they enjoyed their trip to the Suffolk coast as much as the ‘locals’ were enjoying having them in their midst.

Pierre Boulez’s eight-minute piece Mémoriale dating from 1985 and written as a tribute to Igor Stravinsky, premièred by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra on 4 July 1989 at the Ojai Festival conducted by the composer while Debussy’s Images, Book II, orchestrated by Colin Matthews (who was present at the concert and deservedly took a bow) scored for three violins, two violas, cello and two French horns, offered the audience a quieter and relaxing environment all round in contrast to the burst of Berlioz!

Debussy’s three wonderful settings comprising ‘Cloches à travers les feuilles’ (‘Bells through the leaves’), ‘Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut’ (‘And the moon sets over the temple that was’) and ‘Poissons d’or’ (‘Goldfish’) - the last named being probably the most frequently performed of all the ‘Images’ pieces.

A painting of two golden-coloured fish on a small Japanese lacquer panel that Debussy owned is said to have been the inspiration for this fine and detailed work conjuring up and capturing the darting movements of these tiny and fragile water creatures while Pappano certainly captured the grace and elegance of the ‘fleeting’ passages of the score with consummate ease and in true harmony with the LSO chamber group.

Debussy dedicated Images to his good friend and biographer, Louis Laloy, an authority on oriental and ancient Greek music. The poetic wording of the title, the fragmentary melodic structure, the pungent dissonances and the almost floating nature of the sonorities all confirm what Debussy referred to as ‘the search by the poets and painters of the Symbolist movement for the inexpressible which is the ideal of all art’.

I attended so many concerts and recitals at this year’s Aldeburgh Festival - the last roll of the dice by Sir Roger Wright who, in fact, retired as chief executive of Britten Pears Arts last year after a glorious decade - but one that had punch and reached out to me was Alice Weilerstein’s cello recital in the Britten Sinfonia. Her performance was second to none and she comfortably delivered a ravishing account of JS Bach’s Brandenberg Concerto No.5 and, equally, too, Kodály’s B minor Sonata, showing such mastery, control and technique of her chosen instrument producing a clear, rich and resonant tone while maintaining a relaxed and fluid posture thus making the most challenging passages sound so effortless. Brava!

Next year’s festival runs from Friday 12 to Sunday 28 June. Be there or be square!

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