Sixteen premieres, celebrating Britten, Feldman, Henze & Kurtág and Ryan Wigglesworth as featured artist: 77th Aldeburgh Festival

Ryan Wigglesworth & BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at BBC Proms in July 2025 (Photo: BBC/Mark Allan)

The 77th Aldeburgh Festival, which will run from 12 to 28 June 2026, marks the 50th anniversary of Britten's death. The Festival celebrates both Britten's music and the legacy he and Peter Pears established here, particularly their commitment to developing outstanding young artists. Conductor, composer and pianist Ryan Wigglesworth is this year’s featured artist. He and pianist James Baillieu also begin a three-year tenure as associate directors of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme.

Headlining the Festival are semi-staged performances of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, where Wigglesworth conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (of which he is chief conductor). The production is directed by the actor Rory Kinnear who made his directing debut in 2017 with the premiere of Wigglesworth's opera The Winter's Tale at English National Opera [see my review]. The production features Sophie Bevan and Jacques Imbrailo as the lovers.

Wigglesworth and the BBC SSO will also be in concert, joined by pianist Steven Osborne for Ravel's Piano Concerto in G and Wigglesworth's own Piano Concerto, plus music by American composer Elizabeth Ogonek. For the final weekend of the Festival, Wigglesworth joins the Knussen Chamber Orchestra for the world premiere of his Viola Concerto with violist Laurence Power, Britten's early Double Concerto, more Wigglesworth and Brahms. The BBC SSO will be welcoming young people and school-aged children, alongside grown-up audiences for two of Britten's most approachable works, the Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra with a new narration from Rory Kinnear, and Welcome Ode, written for the Queen's visit to Aldeburgh in 1977, and sung by the Aldeburgh Festival Chorus which brings together local amateur singers

Wigglesworth turns to the piano, joined by cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, soprano Anna-Lena Elbert, and violinist Benjamin Marquise Gilmore for Birtwistle's Nine settings of Lorine Niedecker, Britten's Cello Sonata (written for Rostropovich) and Shostakovich's Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Bloch (written for Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya), plus the UK premiere of Tom Coult’s Craftsmen and Clowns. Wigglesworth is joined by his wife, soprano Sophie Bevan, for Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, Britten's The Poet's Echo and Wigglesworth's George Herbert settings, Till Dawning.

The Festival features six world premieres in total, of which three are Britten Pears Arts commissions, plus five co-commissions and five UK premieres, including new works by Eleanor Alberga [see my 2022 interview with her], Lera Auerbach, Tansy Davies, Brett Dean, Lisa Illean, Nathalie Joachim, Cassie Kinoshi, Freya Waley-Cohen [see my 2024 interview with her], and others.

The Festival is also marking three other important anniversaries, the centenaries of Morton Feldman, Hans Werner Henze and György Kurtág. London Sinfonietta performs Henze's Voices, which it commissioned in 1973. Christian Karlsen conducts with mezzo-soprano Carina Vinke and tenor Benjamin Hulett. Pianist Steven Osborne performs a recital of Feldman and Crumb, whilst Pierre-Laurent Aimard returns to Snape Maltings to perform a piano recital featuring a number of miniatures from Kurtág’s Játékok. The Carducci Quartet performs Kurtág’s 12 Microludes for String Quartet Op.13, alongside Webern and Bach. Cellist Guy Johnston will be performing Kurtág’s Signs, Games and Messages as part of Vilde Frang's recital of Hungarian and German chamber music.

Britten Sinfonia's visit to the Festival features Gemma New conducting music by Lisa Illean, Brett Dean and Steve Stelios alongside Britten's Cello Symphony with Laura van der Heijden, and then they are joined by mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston for a programme inspired by the classical world including Haydn's Ariana a Naxos, Britten's Phaedra, John Woolrich's Ulysses Awakes, Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète and Britten’s early Young Apollo.

Other visitors include the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the world premiere of Tansy Davies' Percussion Concerto with Colin Currie, the premiere of Freya Waley-Cohen's Violin Concerto with the composer's sister Tamsin, plus John Adams, Shostakovich, more Elizabeth Ogonek and Rachmaninoff.

Alex Ho and Rockey Sun Keting's collective Tangram [see my 2024 interview with them] have created a new choral theatre piece for the choir Sansara, conductor Tom Herring. David Bates and La Nuova Musica perform Handel's early Italian oratorio Il Trionfo del Tempo. Dunedin Consort joins forces with Mahogany Opera for a theatrical staging of cantatas by neglected Baroque composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. 

Full details from the festival website.