The 77th edition of the Aldeburgh Festival comes round in flaming June while marking the 50th anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s death and, therefore, the festival will not only celebrate his music but also the legacy he and Peter Pears established by their commitment in helping to develop the careers of young outstanding artists.
The opening event - a semi-stage performance of Debussy’s delicate, dreamlike and mysterious five-act opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, directed by Rory Kinnear - promises a hot ticket coming as it does with a stellar cast featuring Jacques Imbrailo as Pelléas and Sophie Bevan as Mélisande while Gordon Bintner, Sarah Connolly and John Tomlinson take on the roles of Golaud, Geneviève and Arkel with Ryan Wigglesworth in the pit with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
The French libretto was adapted from Belgian/Flemish-born playwright Maurice Maeterlinck’s symbolist and enigmatic play of the same name, a work full of symbolic and ambiguous meanings peppered with shadowy characters and perfect for the likes of the composer in his innovative approach to opera and for his startlingly new musical language.
His only completed opera, he finished it in 1902. The critics were rather perplexed by its content but over the course of time Pelléas has become one of the most admired works in the repertoire beguiling audiences time and time again with its elusive shimmering beauty.
Following a couple of performances of Pelléas, Wigglesworth and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra stay over to perform Ravel’s jazz-infused Piano Concerto in G major featuring Steven Osborne as soloist. Written following a trip Ravel made to the USA in 1928, he emphatically remarked: ‘The most captivating part of jazz is its rich and diverting rhythm - jazz is a very rich and vital source of inspiration for contemporary composers and I’m astonished to find that so few Americans are influenced by it.’
Concluding the programme is Wigglesworth’s Piano Concerto, a work looking back through musical history while Elizabeth Ogonek’s All These Lighted Things gets a look-in, too, comprising three little dances for orchestra inspired by Thomas Merton’s poem which draws fascinating sounds from every instrument.
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conclude their Suffolk coastal trip delivering a concert aimed at young people and children of school age alongside grown-up audience members to experience the magic of the symphony orchestra in a programme appropriately entitled ‘Welcome to the Orchestra’.
And ‘welcome’ to a couple of Britten’s most joyful and energetic works: Welcome Ode, one of the composer’s final compositions, written for Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ipswich in her Jubilee Year 1977 and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra performed by the Aldeburgh Festival Chorus with actor/director, Rory Kinnear, offering this most popular work a new narration while later in the festival offers a very special morning of poetry and prose at Thorington’s unique outdoor theatre.
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales, under Kevin John Edusei, finds its way to Suffolk, too, in what promises an exciting and fulfilling concert featuring world premières of Tansy Davies’ Percussion Concerto for Colin Currie and Freya Waley-Cohen’s Violin Concerto performed by her sister, Tamsin Waley-Cohen.
From large musical forces to small: cellist Nicolas Alstaedt joins soprano Anna-Lena Elbert, violinist Benjamin Marquise Gilmore and pianist Ryan Wigglesworth (the festival’s featured artist) in an inspired programme from composers coming from a variety of sources with the ‘muse’ at the forefront and the primary source of inspiration.
An interesting and inspiring programme comprises Birtwistle’s 9 Settings of Lorine Niedecker, a concise, modernist song-cycle for soprano and cello setting short, imagistic poems by the American poet, Lorine Niedecker, composed as both a gift for fellow composer Elliott Carter and a tribute to the poetry of Niedecker.
The concert opens, however, with the UK première of Tom Coult’s Craftsmen and Clowns and continues with Britten’s Cello Sonata in C major, the first piece he composed for Mstislav Rostropovich having met the Russian cellist at a concert in 1960 while ending with Shostakovich’s Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok, composed for Rostropovich’s wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, who premièred the piece in 1967 with her husband playing the cello part.
The Knussen Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble blending experienced musicians with young talent while championing contemporary music was founded by composer/conductor, Ryan Wigglesworth, in 2019, in honour of the British composer, Oliver Knussen (1952-2018) who was so closely involved in the Aldeburgh Festival.
The first of their two concerts witnesses the world première of Wigglesworth’s Viola Concerto, a Britten Pears Arts commission, written for his regular collaborator, Lawrence Power, with the programme also including Britten’s Elegy for solo viola and Brahms’ Symphony No.2 in D major, Op.73, widely considered to be one of his finest and most celebrated works.
For their second concert, Vilde Frang and Lawrence Power perform Britten’s Double Concerto for violin and viola, an early student work while Wigglesworth looks back to Bach in his touching tribute to the well-respected and talented violinist, Laura Samuel (co-founder of the Belcea Quartet and leader of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra) in a serene and thoughtful piece simply entitled For Laura, after Bach. The inspiration for the work, therefore, was Bach’s Violin Partita in D minor performed at her funeral in 2024.
And one of today’s most admired singers, soprano Lise Davidsen, joins her regular collaborator, pianist James Baillieu, in an all-Schubert recital of songs telling of longing, laughter, terror and tears. In his short but fulfilling life, Schubert wrote 600 songs and this carefully curated programme presents the vast scope of the composer’s exploration of human behaviour and emotion from yearning to fear, intense rapture to encounters with death and the discovery of light and sound.
Following their masterclass with Lise Davidsen, alumni of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme and James Baillieu will perform a recital of German Lieder while Ryan Wigglesworth and James Baillieu, in their new roles as Associate Directors of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme, discuss how to best serve the next generation of performers with an overview of their plans for the duration of their time with Britten Pears Arts.
This year’s festival marks the centenaries of Morton Feldman (12th January 1926), Hans Werner Henze (1st July 1926) and Gyorgy Kurtág (19th February 1926) - three hugely influential composers of the 20th century. Therefore, Henze’s Voices will be performed by the London Sinfonietta who, in fact, commissioned and premièred the work in 1973 while the programme also features three new works by Nathalie Joachim, Louise Drewett and Aldeburgh Young Musicians/Patrick Bailey, arr. Louise Drewett, co-commissioned with the London Sinfonietta. The programme also includes protest songs from a contemporary viewpoint from established composers, emerging composers and young people making new work
The exceptional and gifted pianist, Steven Osborne, will play Feldman and Crumb. Towards the end of his life, Feldman became fascinated by ‘almost symmetry’ - structures or objects which appear to be regular but, in fact, contains subtle beats of variation. He wrote of the ‘marvellous shimmer’ of patterns found in old rugs and the perfectly imperfect design of the Babylonian Palais de Mari seen in a photograph at the Louvre.
Crumb’s A Little Suite for Christmas is similarly inspired by art: the 14th-century frescoes by Giotto found in the Arena Chapel in Padua. The programme also features examples of Feldman’s early piano music, along with Crumb’s Processional described by the composer as ‘an experiment in harmonic chemistry’.
Another ‘favoured’ pianist returns to Suffolk, too, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a long-time associate of the festival who worked closely with Kurtág thus bringing an authoritative insight to the composer’s ‘inner, fragile and personal universe’. He’ll perform a recital centred on intricate musical miniatures from Kurtág’s Játékok paired by a variety of Schubert’s dances, waltzes and ländler.
The Carducci Quartet further strengthens Kurtág’s work in the festival through a dedicated chamber-music performance playing 12 Microludes for String Quartet, Op.13, in which he invented an entirely new concept - the ‘microlude’ - comprising tiny, condensed and intense moments of expression with only two pieces in the set lasting longer than a minute. The work pays homage to Kurtág’s predecessors, fellow miniaturist Anton Webern and JS Bach, specifically the composer’s preludes.
More Kurtág comes with the Guy Johnston, Vilde Frang and Friends’ recital performing Signs, Games and Messages focusing on the solo cello versions of a work evolved by Kurtág over a considerable number of years arranged variously for solos or combinations of string instruments.
New music includes six world premières of which three are Britten Pears Arts commissions, five co-commissions and five UK premières while new works emerge from Eleanor Alberga, Lera Auerbach, Tom Coult, Tansy Davies, Brett Dean, Lisa Illean, Natalie Joachim, Cassie Kinoshi, Freya Waley-Cohen, Ryan Wigglesworth and others thereby maintaining Britten Pears Arts’ commitment to the composers of today and the artists who bring their work to life.
It’s good the see the Britten Sinfonia at this year’s festival presenting a couple of concerts with Gemma New conducting them in a very interesting programme featuring conversations with the past and present. Therefore, Lisa Illean’s Chansons looks back to songs written in the 15th century by Gilles Binchois while recorder player, Genevieve Lacey, looks forward by premièring a new work by Lisa Illean for recorder and pre-recorded sounds.
She will also perform Steve ‘Stelios’ Adam’s work ‘et døgn’ (Danish/Norwegian for ‘one day’) roughly a seven-minute piece for recorder and featuring pre-recorded sounds, too, while Brett Dean’s Carlo could well be described as a kind of psychological portrait of the 16th-century composer, Carlo Gesualdo. Completing the programme is Britten’s Cello Symphony, originally written for Rostropovich and performed here by Laura van der Heijden.
For their second concert, mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston joins the Britten Sinfonia in a programme telling of mythological tales set to music spanning three centuries comprising Haydn’s Ariana a Naxos which aims for calm resignation but is mainly spitting with rage, Charpentier’s Médée, another scorned woman and Britten’s Phaedra, his last vocal work premièred in the 1975 Aldeburgh Festival by Janet Baker, depicting a journey from madness to purity.
The programme continues with John Woolrich’s Ulysses Awakes converting Monteverdi’s aria into a solo for viola and Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète, a neo-classical ballet in two tableaux composed between 1927 and 1928 by Stravinsky and choreographed in 1928 by 24-year-old George Balanchine with the composer contributing the libretto. However, it’s an early work by Britten that opens the concert with Young Apollo, a bright, smart and sparkling piece.
One of the most versatile performing groups of its kind, La Nuova Musica offers a rare chance to hear Handel’s first oratorio, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, written when he was just 21 and a work displaying the seemingly effortless lyrical ease and psychological intrigue of his later works. David Bates conducts from the harpsichord leading a stellar cast including Federico Fiorio (Belezza), Chiara Skerath (Piacere), Iestyn Davies (Disinganno) and Nick Pritchard (Tempo).
Following their successful visit to last year’s festival, the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra make a welcome return under the baton of Ryan Bancroft and will be joined by mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly to perform Zemlinsky’s sumptuous Six Songs after Poems by Maeterlinck, orchestrated by Christopher Austin.
The Belgian author, Maeterlinck, was clearly in vogue among composers in the early 1900s as Debussy based an opera on his Pelléas et Mélisande. Also included in the programme is Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem in which a piece of chalk with dreams is the protagonist while Prokofiev’s Symphony No.5 in B flat major, Op.100, one of his most powerful, stirring and most fulfilling works, adds greatly to the overall joy and pleasure of the programme.
Award-winning composers Alex Ho and Rockey Sun Keting, part of the trailblazing artist collective, Tangram, have created a choral-theatre piece co-commissioned by SANSARA and the Netherlands Chamber Choir with support coming from the PRS Foundation, Leche Trust, Radcliffe Trust and Vaughan Williams Foundation. Performed by SANSARA and conducted by Tom Herring, the scenario’s based on the words of Chinese female poets across one thousand years of history thereby promising a fascinating, intriguing and welcoming work.
The celebrated Dunedin Consort team up with Mahogany Opera and Hera to present In the Belly of the Beast, a new show centred round three cantatas by neglected French Baroque composer, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Based on three biblical stories, they’re full-blooded explorations of creation, fate and sacrifice. Directed by Jennifer Fletcher with the text translated by Toria Banks, the soprano Carolyn Sampson is at the heart of the performance.
Comprising violinists Nathan Amaral and Elena Urioste, violist Celia Hatton, cellist Sterling Elliott and pianist Amiri Harewood, the Sphinx Piano Quintet, making their Aldeburgh Festival début, offers a delightful programme of American and British chamber music to include Coleridge Taylor Perkinson’s String Quartet No.1, based on the spiritual ‘Calvary’, William Grant Still’s Suite inspired by three sculptures created during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and the UK première of Cassie Kinoshi’s Songs of Kinship. Completing the programme are Florence Price’s Piano Quintet and Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Trio in C minor dating from 1907. It was this work that established Bridge as one of the leading chamber-music composers of the younger generation.
The Maxwell Quartet turn up in Suffolk to give the UK première of Eleanor Alberga’s String Quartet No.4 heard alongside Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 92 and Brahms’ String Quartet No.2, Op.51 in A minor. In stark contrast to this glorious and welcoming concert, the Grammy-nominated singer and multi-instrumentalist, Olivia Chaney, will present a spellbinding concert of music centred on her contemporary re-workings of Henry Purcell with a star-studded chamber ensemble featuring violinists Jordan Hunt and Rakhi Singh and organist, James McVinnie.
Described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘a quartet of genuine substance’ the Sacconi Quartet are frequently applauded for their beautifully blended sound and have long been a champion of new music therefore their programme includes a brand-new piece by Freya Waley-Cohen entitled Dances, Hymns and Songs for Friendship heard alongside Rachmaninoff’s Romance written when he was 17 while Ravel’s String Quartet in F major completes the programme.
A curiously time-bending quality, Schubert’s Quintet in C major is a late work composed only two months before his death in 1828. But, at the same time, it is the work of a young man as Schubert was only 31 when he died. Languishing for over 20 years before being finally published in 1853, as if a new work, it will be performed by violinists Irene Duval and Magnus Johnston, violist Brett Dean and cellists Guy Johnston and Laura van der Heijden.
The popular and distinguished Carducci Quartet plays a rare performance of Steve Reich’s WTC 9/11 composed a few years after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The string quartet ‘speaks’ the words of emergency responders and grieving relatives as well as thrumming with the anxious, digital tones of an ‘off-the-hook’ telephone while Rebecca Clarke’s sombre Poem, written in 1926, one of only two string quartets by her that has survived, particularly known for its reflective and emotional quality, is so fitting to be heard in this concert which also features Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, Op.10.
Celebrating Britten’s greatest source of inspiration, namely his partner, Peter Pears, Nicky Spence will be joined by guitarist Sean Shibe and pianist Francesca Laur in a performance of Who Are These Children? written in 1969 and one of Britten’s most intriguing, juxtaposing childlike songs with devastating responses to the horrors of war.
Schubert, of course, was a ‘favourite’ of Britten and Pears and songs from his touching, elegiac Schwanengesang (‘swansong’) opens Spence’s recital. The famed Aldeburgh deuce would often conclude a programme with some of Britten’s characterful folksong arrangements for voice and piano and, at other times, Pears would be accompanied by guitarist, Julian Bream. Here, guitar and piano alternate in a collection of favourites including the tongue-twisting ‘Oliver Cromwell’ and ‘Foggy, foggy dew’.
Acclaimed violinist Vilde Frang will be joined by violinist Aylen Pritchin, cellist Guy Johnston and pianist Martin Helmchen, to engage in a lovely and inviting programme of Hungarian and German chamber music. Therefore, Bartók’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No.1, a highly individual encounter between the two instruments, is on the bill while the cello takes the spotlight with solo Kurtág and Brahms’ Cello Sonata No.1 with the programme spiced up by Kodály’s vigorous and rhythmic Serenade for two violins and viola, an intriguing and most satisfying work that is typical of Kodály's style - a blend of folk inspiration and modern harmonies wrapped in classical form.
A chamber-music highlight comes with the Belcea Quartet giving the UK première of Brett Dean’s String Quartet No.4 (A Little Book of Prayers) written in memory of Laura Samuel, the founding second violinist of the quartet. Dean has noted that there’s a particularly prominent role for the second violinist in this new work which is inspired by prayers of all kinds - both sacred and secular. The programme also features Brahms’ String Quartet No.1 in C minor.
Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout team up to perform Bach’s six sonatas for violin and harpsichord demonstrating his mastery of interweaving musical lines while organist Jonathan Scott gives the annual Catherine Ennis Memorial Recital in Orford Church featuring music by Mozart, Vivaldi, Britten and Liszt. As Associate Artist of the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, Scott gives a series of organ recitals which attract huge audiences and with his brother, Tom, his performance videos on the Scott Brother Duo YouTube channel have achieved more than 100 million viewers making them some of the most watched organists in the world.
François Joubert-Caillet and Phillippe Grisvarde’s recital for viola da gamba and harpsichord offer a rare chance to hear works by the 17th/18th-century French baroque composer, Marin Marais, a celebrated virtuoso of the viola da gamba and one of the most important figures of the French baroque era. From relatively humble origins, he was fortunate to receive a thorough musical education and excelled as a viol soloist. He later became a musician at the court of Louis XIV at Versailles where he began a second career as a composer. His life was memorably depicted in the sumptuous film, Tous les matins du monde, in 1991. One of today’s leading viola de gamba players, François Joubert-Caillet’s mission is to make the music of Marais better known.
Alumni of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme - mezzo-soprano Adèle Charvet and pianist Florian Caroubi - have in recent years made the repertoire of La Belle Époque their own and, therefore, an enlightening and entertaining programme is on offer from them comprising Chausson’s Le colibri, Koechlin’s Novembre, Debussy’s La chevelure, Fauré’s En sourdine and Enescu’s Entsagen. The recital, however, opens with Albeniz’s Paradise Regained with words by Francis Money-Coutts.
Performing an all-Schubert programme falls to Australian pianist, Kristian Bezuidenhout, who specializes in performances on early keyboard instruments featuring rare works to late masterpieces ranging through a variety of moods either exploring a particular key or style before shifting to a different musical landscape. His programme gets underway with Fantasy, an early work written when the composer was just 14 years old which will be followed by Allegretto written the year before his death while a performance of the Sonata in E flat major, a charming piece, will greatly add to the overall quality of Bezuidenhout’s programme.
In July 1945 Britten and Menuhin gave a series of concerts in the liberated concentration camps. One of their recitals took place at Belsen and in the audience was the cellist Anita Lasker (later Lasker-Wallfisch) who had been transferred there from Auschwitz where she had been a cellist in the women’s orchestra. She later vividly recalled the performance particularly Britten’s playing: ‘He was completely unobtrusive and yet I found myself transfixed by him sitting there as if he wouldn’t say boo to a goose - but playing to perfection.’
The music performed during these recitals has been pieced together through camp survivor testimony including that of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and is performed in this recital as a tribute to those who lost their lives in the war in the camps and to those who survived its unimaginable horrors. The versatile Polish violinist Maria Włoszczowska will be joined by pianist James Baillieu.
A concert at twilight (taking place on the Hepworth Lawn at Snape Maltings) will see Sean Shibe channelling the divine and the dark and embracing pieces from centuries and continents apart. His programme includes a guitar arrangement of Messiaen’s choral piece, O sacrum convivium, preserving the original contemplative nature of the work but making it sound similar to a piece of slow jazz while Julia Wolfe’s Lad, written for the immense ‘wall-of-sound’ (visions of Stan Kenton!) made by nine bagpipes, is reimagined in this concert for guitar and backing track.
At the more peaceful end of the scale is an arrangement of Hildegard’s O Coruscans lux stellarum paired with Meredith Monk’s Nightfall harbouring a meditative stillness. In between these thoughtful pieces one can enjoy Steve Reich’s rhythmic Electric Counterpoint and American experimental composer Julius Eastman’s open-form musical composition, Buddha, written in 1984.
A BBC New Generation Artist, pianist Julius Asal has been widely praised by Menahem Pressler for his ‘uniquely beautiful sound and special sonority’ and for his Aldeburgh Festival début he’ll present a new commission from Lera Auerbach heard alongside Prokofiev’s rarely performed slow and contemplative miniatures Pensées and Rachmaninoff’s intricate and challenging 13 Préludes, Op.32.
Nicky Spence’s second recital focuses on love in all its forms and joined by the Piatti Quartet and his regular collaborator, pianist Julius Drake, he opens his programme with Fauré’s La bonne chanson in an arrangement for voice and string quartet. They’ll also perform a wide variety of musical voices focusing on the subject of love and marriage ranging from Purcell, Schubert and Richard Strauss to Noël Coward, Tom Lehrer and Victoria Wood while Scottish poetry finds responses from Ravel, Britten and Schumann with Poulenc and John Dankworth casting their musical eye on Shakespeare.
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| Frank Bridge; Benjamin Britten; Ethel Bridge by Unknown photographer snapshot print NPG x15184 © National Portrait Gallery, London |
As an aside, Edward Benjamin Britten (he dropped his first name early in life) was a son of a dentist while his mother was an amateur singer. He was born a Suffolk boy on 22nd November 1913 which also happens to be St Cecilia’s Day, the patron saint of music, at 21 Kirkley Cliff Road, Lowestoft.
But practically forgotten about nowadays is to the fact that Britten forged his early musical talents in Norfolk especially in Norwich as from the tender age of 10 he regularly visited the city for viola lessons with Mrs Audrey Alston, a close friend of his mother and a member of the Norwich String Quartet.
Heavily involved with classical music in Norwich, Mrs Alston practically knew everyone there was to know including the eminent Brighton-born composer, Frank Bridge, who studied at the Royal College of Music from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford. He lodged with Mrs Alston when attending meetings of the Norfolk & Norwich Triennial Festival.
Therefore, what could well be said to be an important part of Britten’s musical education occurred in Norwich at St Andrew’s Hall on 30th October 1924 when he witnessed Frank Bridge conducting his four-movement symphonic tone poem, The Sea.
Three years later (27th October 1927) Mrs Alston urged Bridge (who was in the city to conduct the première of his latest work, Enter Spring) to meet the young aspiring Suffolk-born composer. Reluctantly, he agreed to her request. But following an inspection of Britten’s music, he heartily accepted him as one of his very few composition pupils.
Happily, Britten seem to harbour nice feelings about Norwich which was truly strengthened when he became President of the Norfolk & Norwich Music Club in 1951. With Peter Pears, he presided over several song-recitals in the 1950s and 1960s at Norwich’s elegant Georgian-built Assembly House which hosted a recital by Franz Liszt in September 1840.
Their first recital (27th October 1951) included The Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo composed by Britten in 1940 especially for Peter Pears. Comprising settings of seven sonnets (all love songs, of course) by the Italian painter and poet, Michelangelo, the piece was sung in the original language. And Britten and Pears delivered yet another brilliant song-recital for the Music Club at the Assembly House on 30th January 1954 featuring a performance of Canticle No.1 as well as a selection of folk-song arrangements.
A further song-recital came about on 26th May 1961 which included a performance of Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente (Six Hölderlin Fragments), a song-cycle for high voice and piano composed by Britten in 1958 comprising settings of short poems and verse fragments by the German 18th/19th-century lyric-poet, Friedrich Hölderlin.
Most definitely an important step in the musical life of Norwich and, indeed, the county, dates from 1963 when Britten was invited by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Frank Thistlethwaite, to offer his advice about setting up a music department. This idea came to fruition two years after their meeting.
Dutifully, the University of East Anglia conferred the degree of Doctor of Music (honoris causa) on Britten on 11th November 1967. The first UEA director of music, Dr Philip Ledger, was only 27 when he was appointed in October 1965. His tenure lasted for eight years which included three years as Dean of the School of Fine Arts and Music.
Following UEA, Ledger became director of music and organist at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1973, where earlier he had taken first-class honours. Sadly, though, the UEA music department no longer exists receiving the dreaded axe in 2014, a decision made by the UEA Council in 2011.
However, to cement relationships between Town & Gown, the first big musical event to come from the UEA was a couple of grand performances of War Requiem presented in Norwich Cathedral on 1st/2nd December 1967 bringing together the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra (led by Colin Clouting) and the Norwich Philharmonic Chorus, the UEA Choir and the Suffolk Singers with members of the English Chamber Orchestra, the Ambrosian Singers and Brian Runnett (Norwich Cathedral’s organist) along with the choristers of Norwich Cathedral and boys from Taverham Hall Preparatory School.
There were about 400 performers in all while the soloists comprised Peter Pears, Thomas Hemsley and Mary Wells (Dr Ledger’s wife). Philip Ledger conducted the main musical forces while Benjamin Britten directed the Melos Ensemble and Frederick Firth (Norfolk County Council’s music advisor) the boys’ choirs.
Britten also gave another nod to the University of East Anglia when he appointed Professor Aston as conductor of the Aldeburgh Festival Singers in 1974. He carried out his duties with them until 1988.
Interestingly, many of Britten’s works were first heard in Norwich conducted by the composer starting off with the Simple Symphony, Op 4 (composed at his home on Kirkley Cliff Road, Lowestoft) on 6th March 1934 by the Norwich String Orchestra conducted by Britten at the Stuart Hall, Norwich - currently ‘home’ to the Picturehouse arts cinema, Cinema City - situated directly opposite St Andrew’s Hall while Our Hunting Fathers, Op 8, received its première on 25th September in St Andrew’s Hall at the Norfolk & Norwich Triennial Festival of 1936 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra featuring the Swiss-born soprano, Sophie Wyss.
And in the same year (5th December) A Ceremony of Carols, Op 28, received its first performance in the Norman-built keep of Norwich Castle by the Fleet Street Choir conducted by T B Lawrence featuring Margaret Ritchie (soprano) and Gwendolen Mason (harp) while Hymn to St Peter, Op 56a, received its première on 20th November 1955 at St Peter Mancroft Church, Norwich, performed by the choir of this renowned church in which the German-British architectural historian, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, exclaimed was the finest example of Perpendicular architecture to be found in the whole of England.
Therefore, if the Norfolk & Norwich Festival is so closely associated with the cloistered surroundings of St Andrew’s Hall so, too, is the Norwich Philharmonic Society where on 3rd February 1955 the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra performed Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op 31, conducted by the composer with the soloists comprising Peter Pears and Dennis Brain.
Most of Britten’s large-scale works hit the mark but one that struggled to do so was the opera, Gloriana, written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. The libretto focuses upon the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex. A nice link to Norwich, however, is featured in the first scene of act two depicting the medieval flint-knapped Guildhall situated by Norwich’s marketplace established by the Normans in the 11th century.
Elizabeth I was greeted here on a visit the city in 1578 and most probably stayed at the near-by Maid’s Head Hotel. Dating from the late 13th century, this well-loved hotel, standing in the shadow of Norwich Cathedral, also hosted Edward the Black Prince (son of Edward III) and Catherine of Aragon (first wife of Henry VIII).
Most probably the last time that Britten stepped foot in Norwich was for a performance of Billy Budd by Welsh National Opera at the Theatre Royal on 31st October 1972. As usual, he was accompanied by his lifetime partner, Peter Pears.
Widely regarded as England’s greatest composer since Henry Purcell in the 17th century, Britten (whom Australian-born composer, Malcolm Williamson, said preached peace through his music) was granted a life peerage by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to music on the year of his death in 1976 thereby becoming Baron Britten of Aldeburgh.
By sheer coincidence on the day of his death (4th December) a concert devoted solely to his works took place in St Andrew’s Hall by the UEA Choir and Norwich Sinfonia conducted by Professor Peter Aston and Julian Webb featuring Kenneth Bowman as soloist. The main work in the programme was the cantata Saint Nicolas (op 42) set to a text by Eric Crozier and completed in 1948.
And at Britten’s funeral, Philip Ledger played the Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria, the composer’s only work for solo organ composed in 1946 for St Matthew’s Church, Northampton, using a plainsong theme from a motet by the Spanish Renaissance composer, Tomás Luis de Victoria.
In fact, Ledger, served as a joint artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival for 21 years from 1968. He conducted, too, the opening concert at the rebuilt Snape Maltings Concert Hall in 1970 following the disastrous fire of 1969 which gutted the building following that year’s opening concert.
It goes without saying, really, but the move from the intimate Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh to the Maltings Concert Hall at Snape - a vision that Britten harboured for many years - proved a winner and opened up the Aldeburgh Festival (founded by Britten, Peter Pears and Eric Crozier in 1948) to a much wider (and more diverse) audience.
Out of all the exhibitions at this year’s festival marking the 50th anniversary of Britten’s death one that readily jumps from the page is by Jane Mackay who celebrates Britten’s music in a collection of 100 paintings at the Red House.
What more can be said apart from the wisdom of books, the wisdom of music, the wisdom of art, are all employed and entwined within the wonderful Snape Maltings’ arts complex. Hallelujah!
The 77th Aldeburgh Festival runs from Friday 12th to Sunday 28th June. Check out the whole shooting-match by visiting brittenpearsarts.org
Box office: 01728 687110
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