Concertos for friends: Colin Currie in Tansy Davies, Tamsin Waley-Cohen in Freya Waley-Cohen with BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Kevin John Edusei at Aldeburgh Festival

Tansy Davies: Earthworks - Colin Currie, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Kevin John Edusei (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

John Adams: Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Tansy Davies: Earthworks, Shostakovich: Symphony No.10; Colin Currie percussion, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, cond. Kevin John Edusei; Snape Maltings Concert Hall (Friday 19 June 7.30pm)

Rachmaninov: Romance (andante expressivo) from String Quartet No.1 in G minor, Freya Waley-Cohen: Dances, Songs and Hymns for Friendship, Ravel: String Quartet in F; Sacconi Quartet; Orford Church (Saturday 20th June 11am)

Elizabeth Ogonek: Sleep & Unremembrance, Freya Waley-Cohen: Violin Concerto for Tamsin Waley-Cohen, Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances; Tamsin Waley-Cohen, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, cond. Kevin John Edusei; Snape Maltings Concert Hall (Saturday 20 June 7.30pm)
Reviewed by Tony Cooper

A pair of high emotive concerts from BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the first high octane featuring Colin Currie in Tansy Davies' concerto, and the second more contemplative with Tamsin Waley-Cohen in concerto by her sister Freya, complemented by more Freya Waley-Cohen from the Sacconi Quartet

Opening a ‘noisy’ and high-octane Friday night concert at Snape Maltings as part of the 77th Aldeburgh Festival fell to the well-known minimalist work Short Ride in a Fast Machine by John Adams. Although only lasting a mere four minutes, this bright and driving orchestral fanfare packs a punch like no other and is always exciting and refreshing to hear especially when played by the likes of an orchestra of the calibre as the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Kevin John Edusei.

Specifically designed to capture the exhilarating and sometimes terrifying sensation of a high-speed ride in a sports car, I liken the piece to an F1 racing car on the starting grid. Comprising a relentless beat played by a woodblock imitating a metronomic engine, the orchestra weaves complex, overlapping rhythms round a constant percussive pulse with the rush of brass fanfares simulating the fast-paced shifting of gears and the building of speed. This frenzied pace continues without pause thereby creating an energetic and hypnotic wall of sound that Stan Kenton (the innovator of the ‘Wall of Sound’) would have been truly proud of.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Kevin John Edusei (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

The percussive beat of this brilliant concert continued with Tansy Davies’ Earthworks, a 25-minute percussion concerto specifically written for the internationally renowned virtuoso percussionist, Colin Currie, the work drew heavily from vast geoglyphs and ancient monuments such as the Uffington White Horse in which Davies imagines these colossal shapes carved into the earth as a form of ancient language, a primal communication, say, between our ancestors and the future.

From Young Apollo to the Cello Symphony to the Poet's Echo to Phaedra: the range of Britten's composing career explored by Britten Sinfonia at Aldeburgh Festival alongside new works

Genevieve Lacey, Gemma New, Britten Sinfonia, Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Steve (Stelios) Adam: et døgn (one day), Lisa Illean/Binchois: Chansons, Lisa Illean: New works for recorder, strings and pre-recorded sounds, Brett Dean: Carlo, Britten: Cello Symphony; Genevieve Lacey recorder, Laura van der Heijden cello, Britten Sinfonia, cond. Gemma New; Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Britten: The Poet’s Echo, Mussorgsky: Songs and Dances of Death, Ryan Wigglesworth: Till Dawning, Britten: Folksong arrangements on Moore’s Irish Melodies; Sophie Bevan soprano, Ryan Wigglesworth piano; Britten Studio, Snape Maltings.

Britten: Young Apollo, Haydn: Arianna a Naxos, Stravinsky: Apollon musagète, John Woolrich: Ulysses Awakes, Charpentier: 'Quel prix de mon amour' (from Médée), Britten: Phaedra; Britten Sinfonia, Zoë Beyers violin/director, Helen Charlston, mezzo-soprano; Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Reviewed by Tony Cooper (17 & 18 June 2026)

Two programmes curated by Britten Sinfonia featured grand performances of Brett Dean’s Carlo and Britten’s Cello Symphony, and the fresh and youthful mezzo voice of Helen Charlston in an illuminating and uplifting programme

Curated by the Britten Sinfonia, the concert on Wednesday 17 June at the Aldeburgh Festival featured an eclectic and inquisitive programme which opened with a relatively short seven-minute piece conceived by Australian futuristic composer, Steve (Stelios) Adam, who harbours a long-term fascination with music, sound and its associated technologies therefore electroacoustic composition and computer-generated music lies at the very heart of his creative output.

Scored for recorder and electroacoustic engineering, et døgn (one day), a delicately constructed work, created a hauntingly beautiful exploration and fusion of ‘live’ music and computer-generated sound witnessing virtuoso Australian recorderist, Genevieve Lacey, impeccable in her playing, employing the use of four recorders - bass, tenor, descant and treble, handmade by Joanne Saunders and Fred Morgan - which was captivating throughout the performance.

An Australian takeover, this enviable concert also projected a couple of works by Australian composer (now based in UK) Lisa Illean whose arrangement of Gilles Binchois, Chansons featured the fine strings of the Britten Sinfonia who, standing and gathered in a semicircle round their New Zealand conductor, Gemma New, created an intimate environment for what was an intimate and refreshing work originated by this well-loved composer of the 15th century renowned for his settings of secular chansons.

Lisa Illean’s second offering to this well-curated programme Swellsong received its UK première in the presence of the composer. Scored for recorder, strings and pre-recorded orchestral sounds, the mixing engineer on stage finely balanced the delicate acoustic output of the strings which were tenderly heard against a breathy subtle projection of the recorder.

A lovely, inspiring and thoughtful work, however, it incorporated the plainsong melody ‘Fulcite me floribus’ (Strengthen me with flowers), a liturgical text recollecting love and grief transfigured through faith who in Illean’s thought processes reimagines the text in relation to light, water and time thereby crafting a phantasy soundscape occupying another world!

American themes at Aldeburgh: Tony Cooper enjoys a quartet by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson & an absorbing orchestral programme highlighting Elizabeth Ogonek.

Sphinx Piano Quintet: Nathan Amaral, Elena Urioste, Celia Hatton, Sterling Elliott, Amiri Harewood - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: BPA)

Perkinson: String Quartet No.1 ‘Calvary’, Vaughan Williams: Rondo for Piano, Still: Suite for Cello and Piano, arr. Randall Goosby, Cassie Kinoshi: Songs of Kinship, Bridge: Phantasie Piano Quartet, Price: Piano Quintet No.1; Sphinx Piano Quintet (Nathan Amaral, Elena Urioste, Celia Hatton, Sterling Elliott, Amiri Harewood); Britten Studio, Snape Maltings

Elizabeth Ogonek: All These Lighted Things, Ravel: Piano Concerto in G, Ryan Wigglesworth: Piano Concerto, Ravel: La Valse; Steven Osborne, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ryan Wigglesworth; Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 14 June 2026 

In the afternoon at the Aldeburgh Festival, the first quartet by black American composer, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, proved a revelation particularly with its fusion of classical-based music tinged with the genre of jazz and blues.  An absorbing and exciting evening programme came from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra highlighting the music of American contemporary composer, Elizabeth Ogonek. 

I was more than interested to learn more about 1932-born black American composer, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, who was on the bill for the Sphinx Piano Quintet’s concert at the Britten Studio, Snape Maltings. Specifically named in honour of the celebrated Afro-British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) reflected his parents’ admiration for black excellence in classical music. 

He wrote a couple of string quartets in quick succession and his first quartet entitled ‘Calvary’ was the first item on an excellent programme curated by the Sphinx Piano Quintet, a dynamic artist-driven chamber ensemble formed under the acclaimed Sphinx Organization established in Detroit by Aaron P. Dworkin in 1996. A social justice and educational enterprise, Sphinx is dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts with a specific mission to champion exceptionally talented black and Latinx classical musicians. 

Both men were trailblazers of their day bridging classical music with their respective black heritage. Samuel was a renowned composer in late 19th-century London while Perkinson was a highly-versatile American composer whose work, although based on the classical idiom, also employed the genre of jazz and blues. Therefore, Perkinson’s first quartet, a three-movement work written in 1956, blends a traditional classical-based format with elements of jazz, blues and spirituals.  

A day at Aldeburgh: Lise Davidsen's Aldeburgh Festival début in Schubert and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande semi-staged

Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande - Myrna Tennant, Camilla Seale, Phoebe Rayner - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Schubert: Gretchen am Spinnrade; Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister; Der Tod und das Mädchen; Erlkönig; Lise Davidsen soprano, James Baillieu piano; Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande; Jacques Imbrailo (Pelléas), Sophie Bevan (Mélisande), Gordon Bintner (Golaud), Sarah Connolly (Geneviève), Nicolas Testé (Arkël), Beth Stirling (Yniold); dir: Rory Kinnear, set/costume designer Vicki Mortimer, lighting designers Paule Constable/Imogen Clark; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, cond. Ryan Wigglesworth; Snape Maltings Concert Hall

Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 13 June 2026

Making her Aldeburgh Festival début, Lise Davidsen delivered a memorable afternoon recital of Schubert Lieder brilliantly accompanied by the pianist, James Baillieu. In the evening, the semi-staged performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande highlighted the brilliance of the orchestral playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth and the conversational clarity of the singers with Sophie Bevan and Jacques Imbrailo in the title roles. 

[Elsewhere on Planet Hugill, Robert chats to James Baillieu about his new role on the Britten Pears Arts Young Artist Programme and to Ryan Wigglesworth about being Featured Artist at this year's festival]

I was more than proud being a member of the audience when Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen made her Bayreuth Festival début in 2019 as Elisabeth in Tobias Kratzer’s outstanding but unconventional modern staging of Tannhäuser. [see Tony's review] The show featured an odd assortment of characters up to no good either riding a battered old Citroën Type-H van (Venusberg on wheels), nicking burgers from Burger King or siphoning off petrol - and the rest! Get the picture?

Her Bayreuth performance was immaculate, catapulting her into the upper echelons of the opera world while cementing her status as one of the world’s leading Wagnerians. Her Aldeburgh début follows suit. I found it satisfying being in the cosy, comfortable and spartan space of the Snape Maltings Concert Hall harbouring acoustics, I feel, perfect for voice and piano and so ideal for Davidsen singing Schubert Lieder.

James Baillieu, Lise Davidsen - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Admirably accompanied by James Baillieu on piano, Davidsen opened with such glowing and accurate accounts of Gretchen am Spinnrade and Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister, a couple of acclaimed art-songs that Schubert set to texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Getting the keys to the toyshop: I chat to Ryan Wigglesworth about being Featured Artist at the 2026 Aldeburgh Festival featuring him as conductor, composer, & chamber musician

Ryan Wigglesworth (Photo: BBC/Gordon Burniston)

At this year's Aldeburgh Festival, which runs from 12 to 18 June 2026, the festival's Featured Artist will be Ryan Wigglesworth and over the 17 days of the festival there will be a chance to experience the various aspects of Ryan's career from concerts with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO), of which he is chief conductor, and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra, to a semi-staged production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and chamber music with friends and colleagues, all this alongside performances of Ryan's music and the premiere of his Viola Concerto written for violist Laurence Power.

Ryan comments that being Featured Artist means that to some extent he gets the keys to the toyshop and can help shape the festival. His performances are dotted throughout the festival but with hot spots at the beginning and end. The selections of performances bring the various parts of his life together, with orchestral performances, playing chamber music with colleagues which is a rare occurrence, and add in the premiere of his Viola Concerto.

Aldeburgh as a place is somewhere he has been involved with for a long time: it means so much to him, and he has always felt at home there. Oliver Knussen lived there and Ryan spent so much time with him there that the connection goes deep. Ryan adds that it is difficult to pinpoint what it is about Aldebugh, but it is a special place to work and the Aldeburgh Festival returns something of the founding ethos with friends making music together on stage. Britten and Pears created the festival because they wanted to do what they do but at home, and the festival has kept something of that ethos. This is why Ryan is drawn back to the place.

Ryan Wigglesworth conducting the Knussen Chamber Orchestra at the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Ryan's own works are usually tied to the performers for whom they were written. His Piano Concerto (2019), which he and the BBCSSO perform at Aldeburgh this year with Steven Osborne, was written for Marc-Andre Hamelin but pianist Steven Osborne has performed it a few times. What is important to Ryan are relationships that go beyond just the odd concert together, with performers such as Osborne and violist Laurence Power for whom Ryan has written his Viola Concerto. Ryan takes pleasure in getting to know them as musicians, and this is when the ideas come, when he has a player's particular sound in his head. He comments that Power has a unique sound and that he is built to get a sound out of the viola. For Ryan, Power has such a personal approach to everything he that it is a special gift to hear his own music played by Power. Also at the festival, Ryan and soprano Sophie Bevan are performing Ryan's song cycle Till Dawning (from 2018, setting poetry by George Herbert). The cycle was written for Sophie Bevan and as she is Ryan's wife he describes this as the deepest collaboration of all.

Authenticity in song: I chat to pianist James Baillieu about his new role on the Britten Pears Arts Young Artist Programme, performing with soprano Lise Davidsen & the future of song

James Baillieu (Photo: David Ruano)

From this year, pianist James Baillieu and conductor/composer Ryan Wigglesworth begin a three-year tenure as Associate Directors of the Britten Pears Arts Young Artist Programme, with both men being significantly involved in this year's Aldeburgh Festival which runs from 12 to 26 June 2026. 

For James the appointment is a big honour. He comments that Britten Pears Arts is a wonderful organisation, very collaborative and very collegial. As he sees it, he has been brought on board to take the legacy of Britten and Pears forward, to keep their ideals at the heart of the training but have the teaching and training for the Young Artists responding to what the music world is like today. They are moving away from a 'one size fits all' approach to seeing what each Young Artist needs.

There will continue to be a Festival Academy, a week of masterclasses during the festival. But they will be adding performance psychology, career building, health and wellness and movement, the additional skills that are generally not taught in conservatoires. Typically, the masterclasses have been voice and piano and James wants to add instrumental duos as James feels that there is not a lot of focus on these. For young song pianists opportunities are not as widely available as when James was a young pianist, and they need to develop versatility by having instrumental repertoire too. James wants to look at the versatility of the young musicians and consider what skills they need to help them get working.

Complementary to this, Ryan Wigglesworth's focus will be orchestral and composition. James is also working on strategic partnerships with organisations with similar ideals so that Britten Pears Arts can amplify the exposure that the Young Artists get, helping them get the opportunities they need.

James Baillieu & Benjamin Appl at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2025 (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Aldeburgh Festival 2026: our East Anglia-based correspondent Tony Cooper takes a deep dive into the delights on offer at next year's festival

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.  

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. 

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.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s visit to this year’s Aldeburgh Festival offered a couple of favourable concerts that stamped the quality and commitment of its fine bunch of players.

Britten: Our Hunting Fathers - Allan Clayton, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo - Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Daniel Kidane: Awake, Helen Grime: Violin Concerto, Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, Vier letzel Lieder; Anu Komsi, Leila Josefowicz, BBC Symphony Orchestra, cond. Sakari Oramo; Snape Maltings Concert Hall.
Helen Grime: Night Songs, Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, Brian Elias: Horn Concerto, Sibelius: Symphony No.5 in E flat; Allan Clayton, Ben Goldscheider, BBC Symphony Orchestra, cond. Sakari Oramo; Snape Maltings Concert Hall
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 21 & 22 June 2025

The performance by Allan Clayton of Britten’s song-cycle, Our Hunting Fathers, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra proved a highlight of my Aldeburgh Festival weekend

When the BBC Symphony Orchestra turns up on the Suffolk coast, it’s a grand event all round. Blooming marvellous, I say! In their first concert for this year's Aldeburgh Festival (Saturday 21 June), opening with a brilliant performance of Daniel Kidane’s Awake, a 12-minute work written by Kidane in his early thirties when ‘raring to go’ making (and marking) a breakthrough in his blossoming career.  

Kidane writes to my liking and Awake (which received its première at the Last Night of the Proms in 2019) offers the listener a host of soaring melodies punctuated by erratic rhythmic patterns and extremely bold harmonies thereby reflecting the composer’s interest in jazz and all the associated ‘spin-offs’ that this musical genre inspires. 

There’s no ‘let-up’ for members of the orchestra as from the first to the last bar of this riveting and exciting work of exacting proportions they’re playing at full speed with Kidane’s bright and colourful score constructed round a series of interconnective sections thereby creating continuity and flow. 

A brilliant curtain-raiser to the concert the visual and musical aspect of it was highlighted by a member of the percussion department who (proudly standing) circled above his head a ‘wind whistler’ (‘whirly tube’) adding so much to the overall soundscape of an interesting and challenging piece which the audience lapped up. 

Helen Grime: Violin Concerto - Leila Josefowicz, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo - Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

A trio of concerts at this year’s Aldeburgh Festival highlights the diversity of music to be found on the Suffolk coast.

Edward Gardner & Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

Daniel Kidane: Sirens, Mark-Anthony Turnage: Refugee, Nielsen: Symphony No.4; Allan Clayton, Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, cond. Edward Gardner; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Suffolk 

Alex Tay, Mingdu Li, Liucilė Vilimaitė, Hy-Khang Dang, Sam Rudd-Jones, Jasper Eaglesfield, Helen Grime, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Colin Matthews, Goehr, Saariaho; Britten Pears Contemporary Ensemble, cond. Jonathan Berman/Claudia Fuller; Britten Studio, Snape Maltings, Suffolk  

Purcell: King Arthur; Gabrieli Consort & Players, dir. Paul McCreesh; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Suffolk  
Reviewed by Tony Cooper: 19-20 June 2025

The concert performance of Purcell’s King Arthur by the Gabrieli Consort and Players would take some beating. 

The opening concert of my first Aldeburgh Festival excursion this year featured a storming and high-energy work (faster than an F1 car!) entitled Sirens by Daniel Kidane, born to a Russian mother and an Eritrean father in 1986.  

For sure, an energetic and appealing composer, Kidane harbours bright and original ideas and I well remember (and favoured) his orchestral work Awake premièred by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, when attending the Last Night of the Proms in 2019.  

A frenetic and tasteful opener to the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra’s concert in Snape Maltings as part of the 76th Aldeburgh Festival, Kidane’s Sirens, flamboyantly conducted by Edward Gardner, proved an atmospheric, eclectic and jazz-inspired piece capturing so well the sounds and energy of Manchester’s nightlife by incorporating elements of various musical genres from jungle to dubstep spiced up and mixed with an R&B cocktail for good measure. 

Helping so much the musical landscape and feel to the piece was Kidane employment of bowed crotales to create a sustained smooth ethereal sound harbouring rich overtones while the harmonies of the work become more intense and dissonant towards the final bars.  

Purcell: King Arthur - Gabrieli Consort & Players, Paul McCreesh - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)

One of the four featured artists at this year’s festival, Kidane (a name to be reckoned with!) keeps good company with the likes of tenor Allan Clayton, composer Helen Grime and violinist Leila Josefowicz. 

The opening work of the Aldeburgh Festival’s 76th edition fell to Colin Matthews’ A Visit to Friends, the composer’s first foray into opera.

Colin Matthews: A Visit to Friends - Lotte Betts-Dean, Marcus Farnsworth - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

Colin Matthews: A Visit to Friends; Lotte Betts-Dean, Susanna Hurrell, Marcus Farnsworth, Edward Hawkins, Gary Matthewman, director Rachael Hewer, Aurora Orchestra, conductor Jessica Cottis; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Aldeburgh Festival
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 14 June 2025

An ‘opera-within-an-opera’, Colin Matthews’ A Visit to Friends draws on Anton Chekhov’s intriguing short story of the same name published in 1898 and William Boyd’s Chekhovian play, Longing 

Over the past few years, the Aldeburgh Festival has ‘opened’ with a chamber opera and one that holds its memory for me is The Hunting Gun by Austrian composer, Thomas Larcher, seen in 2019 [see Tony's review]. His first foray into opera. Based on the novella of the same name by Japanese writer, Yasushi Inoue, the opera explores themes of love, betrayal and death telling the story of a secret love affair through the letters of three people. 

Opening Aldeburgh’s 76th edition, Colin Matthews’ new chamber opera, A Visit to Friends, Matthews’ first foray into opera, too, while the librettist novelist/playwright, William Boyd, follows suit delivering a striking and appealing libretto drawing on his Chekhovian play Longing but, more importantly, Chekhov’s short story, A Visit to Friends, written in 1898, almost as a study for The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov’s last play of 1903) which he was hesitant in publishing because its central character, he felt, was too autobiographical. [Read more in Robert's interview with Colin and William, 'A terrific sense of collaboration']

Colin Matthews: A Visit to Friends - Susanna Hurrell, Gary Matthewman - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

Comprising four scenes from a lost ‘opera’ which has been rediscovered in a Moscow archive with no composer’s name attached, the rehearsals of A Visit to Friends involve three people - a couple of dreamy, determined and hopeful young women ‘head-over-heels’ in love with the same ‘dithering’ man who cannot commit himself. A Moscow lawyer, to boot, the girls dream and live in hope that he’ll help them resolve their financial troubles.  

A terrific sense of collaboration: composer Colin Matthews and writer William Boyd on their first opera, A Visit to Friends

William Boyd and Colin Mathews (Photo: Mark Allan)

During his long career the composer Colin Matthews has been associated with several other composers, he assisted both Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst at the Aldeburgh Festival, he and his brother David assisted Deryck Cooke on the completion of Mahler's Symphony No. 10, whilst more recent projects have seen Colin orchestrating Debussy. And since his orchestral Fourth Sonata (written 1974–75) won the Scottish National Orchestra's Ian Whyte Award, Colin's work has unfolded in a variety of genres, but until now never opera.

On 13 June 2025, Colin's first opera, A Visit to Friends will premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival. The new opera is a collaboration with novelist and playwright William Boyd (whose first opera libretto it is), and intriguingly whilst Boyd's libretto has its origins in the Chekhov short story of the same name, written in 1898 almost as a study for The Cherry Orchard, Colin's music is partly inspired by that of Scriabin. I recently went to chat with Colin and William about the new opera and their collaboration.

The new opera takes the form of a group of contemporary singers rehearsing a hitherto unknown opera by a Russian composer from the early years of the 20th century, with William's libretto for the 'rediscovered' opera channelling Chekhov and Colin's music channelling Scriabin, but around these scenes are scenes of the contemporary singers rehearsing and gradually, for them, life starts to imitate art.

The work just grew through Colin and William's collaboration, but from the outset, Colin was clear that he wanted to write an opera about opera. The two men first met in 2019 and agreed to collaborate, but initially with no clear idea of the direction the collaboration would take. 

A Visit to Friends: a new opera by Colin Matthews, residencies from Allan Clayton, Helen Grime, Daniel Kidane and Leila Josefowicz at the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival

Colin Matthews

Whilst most people are still frantically planning for Christmas, the good folk at Britten Pears Arts are thinking much further ahead and have announced the highlights of the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival which runs from 13 to 29 June 2025.

The Festival opens with the world premiere of Colin Matthews’ new opera A Visit to Friends, with a libretto by William Boyd. An opera about love. Or, more accurately, about love’s frustrations. Drawing on Anton Chekhov’s short story and William Boyd’s Chekhovian play LONGING, A Visit to Friends is, beguilingly, an opera within an opera, with music strongly influenced by Scriabin. Additionally, there will be a reading of Chekhov’s short story that inspired the opera in the enchanting woodland setting of Thorington Theatre.

Colin Matthews' links to the festival go back to the 1970s when he worked at Aldeburgh with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst, and he was was Chair of the Britten Estate for many years, and is Joint President of Britten-Pears Arts. Other Colin Matthews' works in this festival include String Quartet No. 6 with the Gildas Quartet, and Paraphrases written for featured artist Leila Josefowicz alongside brothers Paul and Huw Watkins, plus a new orchestration of Debussy’s Images (Book 2) performed in the final concert of the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival by the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Antonio Pappano.

Four featured artists – tenor Allan Clayton, violinist Leila Josefowicz, and composers Helen Grime and Daniel Kidane – are at the heart of this year’s programme. 

Clayton joins the Knussen Chamber Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth to perform Clayton’s favourite Britten song cycle - Nocturne, and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo he performs Britten's Our Hunting Fathers, and with Antonio Pappano at the piano he performs Britten's Seven Sonnets of Michaelangelo plus Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge with members of the LSO. With Edward Gardner and the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra he performs Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Refugee - written for him - with texts by Emily Dickinson, Benjamin Zephaniah, W.H. Auden and Brian Bilston. The Dunedin Consort and Clayton combine new and old in a programme including the first performance of a Britten Pears Arts commission by Tom Coult based on the text of the Lamentations of Jeremiah.

Helen Grime's Festival residency offers a chance to hear a wide range of work including her string quartets from the Heath and Fibonacci Quartets, her Violin Concerto from Leila Josefowicz and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo, and i written for Knussen’s 60th birthday in 2012, heard next year again from the BBC SO and Oramo. Grime's new song cycle for soprano and orchestra Folk, which draws on the folklore of the Isle of Man, was written for soprano Claire Booth – who had the idea for the piece - and she performs it with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. Other Grime works in the festival include her Missa Brevis at the Festival Service and her cello solo, Harp of North inspired by lines from Walter Scott’s folk-inflected poem The Lady of the Lake.

Daniel Kidane's orchestral work Sirens, a collaboration with Zimbabwean writer and poet Zodwa Nyoni, is performed by Edward Gardner and the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, his work for the Last Night of the Proms in 2019, Awake, is performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo, Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra and Kirill Karabits are joined by YCAT artist, Sphinx Prize winner and Classic FM Rising Star Nathan Amaral to perform Kidane’s violin concerto Aloud. Tenor Nick Pritchard and pianist Ian Tindale perform Kidane’s Songs of Illumination, pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen performs Kidane’s Three Etudes inspired by a Kandinsky painting, Carducci Quartet gives the first performance of Daniel Kidane’s new String Quartet – a Britten Pears Arts Commission, BBC Singers and Sofi Jeannin perform his lockdown piece The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash, with text set by Simon Armitage, Alisa Weilerstein’s solo cello recital includes Daniel Kidane’s Sarabande Parts 1 – 3, and the Festival Service includes his Christus factus est.

Leila Josefowicz makes her Aldeburgh Festival and Snape Maltings debut, and she performs Helen Grime's Violin Concerto, and is joined by brothers Huw and Paul Watkins, for a chamber concert that includes the world premiere of Colin Matthews' Paraphrases, written especially for her, plus The Psychology of Performance where Leila Josefowicz leads a fascinating study of topics such as stage anxiety, interpretation from a non-musical point of view, and other matters to do with performance.

Full details from the festival website, and the festival brochure is also available online.

From familiar works to brand-new pieces: Autumn at Snape Maltings

Barbara Hepworth: Family of Man - Snape Maltings, winter 2021 (Photo: Shoel Stadlen, courtesy Britten Pears Arts)

The Autumn season at Snape Maltings Concert Hall sees Britten Pears Arts presenting a wide and varied range of activity from familiar works to brand-new pieces with leading performers, orchestras and ensembles beating a path to coastal Suffolk.

Undoubtedly, a major event in the Snape Maltings Concert Hall calendar is the Britten Weekend (2nd/3rd November) which this year features brother-and-sister duo, Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason, seen as both soloists and chamber musicians. Their programme comprises Britten's Cello Sonata in C major paired with the Sonata in D minor by Shostakovich, a composer very close to Britten while the Britten Pears Chamber Choir (formerly Aldeburgh Voices) will sing three lovely contrasting choral mass settings by Britten, Kodály and Tavener from across five centuries in Orford Church thereby reimagining a choral concert from the Aldeburgh Festival’s early days.

Each year, too, the Viola Tunnard Artist award supports a talented collaborative pianist to develop their craft and skills and this year the accolade falls to French-born pianist, Juliette Journaux, who is addicted to Schubert, Beethoven, Mahler and the like. She will be joined by French-born mezzo-soprano, Mathilde Ortscheidt, performing a delectable programme of Mahler, Britten and Elgar while the Britten Weekend moves over to the Red House for a tour of the archive strongrooms (3rd November) while there will also be a celebration across the site of the people who had deep connections to the Red House, namely Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, who founded the Aldeburgh Festival in partnership with librettist/producer Eric Crozier in 1948.

The 75th edition of the Aldeburgh Festival rounded off with a rare visit to East Anglia of the celebrated Hallé Orchestra.

Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire - Claire Booth, the Nash Ensemble - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Marcus Roth, (c) Britten Pears Arts)

Schoenberg: Pierrot lunaire, Beethoven, Julian Anderson, Judith Weir, Mozart; Claire Booth, The Nash Ensemble, Martyn Brabbins; Aldeburgh Festival at Britten Studio
Britten: Curlew River; Ian Bostridge, Duncan Rock, Peter Brathwaite, Willard White, Matthew Jones, Deborah Warner, Audrey Hyland; Aldeburgh Festival at Blythburgh Church
Britten: Suite from Death in Venice, Mahler: Symphony No. 5; The Hallé, cond. Sir Mark Elder; Aldeburgh Festival
Reviewed by Tony Cooper (25 June 2024)

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival has reached new limits with a roster of excellent concerts and recitals not least by the tasteful musical feast served up for the last weekend. 

A cycle of 50 poems, Pierrot lunaire was published in 1884 by Belgian author, Albert Giraud (born Emile Albert Kayenbergh in Leuven in 1860) closely associated with the Symbolist Movement who wrote poems in French. The protagonist of the cycle, Pierrot - the moonstruck and fantastical clown who wears a mask to hide one’s true feelings - is the well-loved comic servant and ‘outsider’ of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte theatrical tradition. Early 19th century Romantics, such as Théophile Gautier, were drawn to him by his Chaplinesque pluckiness and pathos.  

Therefore, remarkable in many respects, Giraud’s collection is among the most densely and imaginatively sustained works in the ‘Pierrot’ canon which attracted the attention of an unusually high number of composers but it’s Schoenberg’s setting that’s the most renowned and widely considered one of the landmark masterpieces of 20th-century music. Although the composition is atonal, it’s not written in the twelve-tone technique that Schoenberg developed (and favoured) in his later years. 

The commission came from Albertine Zehme, a chanteuse married to a Leipzig lawyer, asking Schoenberg to set a lecture text to music. Completely free in the selection of poems, his choice was, of course, the French cycle of poems of Pierrot lunaire by Giraud translated by Otto Erich Hartleben. Selecting 21 poems from the cycle, Schoenberg duly divided them into three distinctive groups: in the first (Drunk on the Moon, Colombine, The Dandy, A Pale Washerwoman, Valse de Chopin, Madonna, The Sick Moon Pierrot) Pierrot sings of love, sex and religion; in the second (Night, Prayer to Pierrot, Robbery, Red Mass, Gallows Song, Beheading, The Crosses) he sings of violence, crime and blasphemy; in the third (Homesickness, Foul Play, Parody, The Spot on the Moon, Serenade, Journey Home, O Ancient Fragrance) Pierrot dreams of returning home to Bergamo with his past haunting him. 

At the work’s première in 1912, the ensemble comprised Albertine Zehme (voice) with Hans W. de Vries (flute), Karl Essberger (clarinet), Jakob Malinjak (violin), Hans Kindler (cello) and Eduard Steuermann (piano). According to Anton Webern, the première was a great success for performers and Schoenberg but received a bad press although most of the audience, fascinated by the new sounds, responded reasonably well to the performance overall.  

Britten: Curlew River - Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Marcus Roth, (c) Britten Pears Arts)

But Pierrot lunaire at the Rudolfinum, Prague, on 24 February 1913, caused uproar and mayhem with the audience becoming one of Schoenberg’s most frightening and traumatic experiences which he remembered for the rest of his life, leading him to demand guarantees for trouble-free performances at further ‘Pierrot’ concerts. The première of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Theatre du Champs-Élysées, Paris, appeared two months after Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, widely considered the most notorious scandal in the history of music, mirrors the same scenario. 

Thankfully, no one had angst or anger etched into their faces at the Aldeburgh Festival in such a brilliant and effortless performance delivered by Claire Booth with the performance nicely sandwiched between Thursday’s Solstice (20 June) and Saturday’s Full Moon (22 June) and coinciding, too, with the anniversary of Peter Pears’ birthday. Heard in the intimacy and comfort of the Britten Studio (ideal for works such as Pierrot lunaire) the players of The Nash Ensemble - Philippa Davies (flute), Richard Hosford (clarinet), Benjamin Nabarro (violin), Lars Anders Tomter (viola), Adrian Brendel (cello) and Alasdair Beatson (piano) - were found on top form. Are they ever off it? 

Time remembered: the 75th edition of the Aldeburgh Festival lovingly recreates the opening night of 1948 Festival

Robin Haigh: LUCK - Matilda Lloyd, Britten Sinfonia, Jessica Cottis - Aldeburgh Festival at Snape Maltings, 2024 (Photo: Angus Cooke)

Purcell: Chaconny in G minor, Handel: Organ Concerto in D minor, Op.7, No.4, Robin Haigh: LUCK, Britten: Saint Nicolas; Nick Pritchard, Matilda Lloyd, Katherine Dienes-Williams; Britten Sinfonia, Choristers of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Britten Pears Chorus, cond. Jessica Cottis; Aldeburgh Festival at Snape Maltings
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 15 June 2024

For its 75th birthday celebrations, the Aldeburgh Festival recreates the festival's very opening concert from 1948, with one modern twist

The first concert of the Aldeburgh Festival took place in Aldeburgh parish church dedicated to SS Peter and Paul on 15 June 1948 featuring an attractive programme comprising Purcell’s Chaconny in G minor and Handel’s Organ Concerto in D minor paired with Martin Shaw’s God’s Grandeur and Britten’s cantata, Saint Nicolas. For this significant 75th festival, the concert was recreated on 15 June 2024 at Snape Maltings with Shaw’s work replaced by Robin Haigh’s LUCK, a concerto for trumpet and orchestra written for Matilda Lloyd. [Read Robin's article about writing the work]

Appropriately, the opening work of the first concert of the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948 fell to the well-loved 17th-century English-born composer, Henry Purcell, one of Benjamin Britten’s major musical influences. Therefore, in Purcell’s Chaconny in G minor - a short, sharp, five-minute piece - it provided a nice curtain-raiser to an agreeable and entertaining concert (I should imagine, one of the hottest tickets of the festival) immaculately, crisply and evenly played by the strings of the Britten Sinfonia conducted with great flair and enthusiasm by Australian-British conductor, Jessica Cottis, currently artistic director and chief conductor of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. The piece was probably composed around 1680 while Purcell was employed by King Charles II and nearly a decade before the composer turned his attention almost exclusively to the theatre after the accession of William III and Queen Mary in 1689. 

Handel: Organ Concerto - Katherine Dienes-Williams, Britten Sinfonia, Jessica Cottis - Aldeburgh Festival at Snape Maltings, 2024 (Photo: Angus Cooke)

The 75th edition of the Aldeburgh Festival gets off to a good, spirited and proud start

Messiaen: Hawari - Gweneth Ann Rand, Simon Lepper - Britten Studio, Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh Festival (Photo Britten Pears Arts)

Judith Weir: Blond Eckbert; English Touring Opera, dir. Robin Norton-Hale, cond. Gerry Cornelius
Messiaen song-cycles; Gweneth Ann Rand, Simon Lepper
Brtitten, Elgar, Shostakovich; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Alban Gerhardt, cond. Edward Gardner
Schumann and Larcher: André Schuen, Julius Drake
Henry Purcell: The Fairy Queen; Vox Luminis, Tuomo Suni, artistic director, Lionel Meunier
Reviewed by Tony Cooper (12 June 2024)

The Aldeburgh Festival's opening weekend included highlights such as British soprano, Gweneth Ann Rand, singing three Messiaen song-cycles over three concerts in the Britten Studio accompanied by pianist, Simon Lepper

Founded by Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Eric Crozier in 1948, the Aldeburgh Festival (now celebrating its 75th edition) got off to a spirited and inspiring start with a new production of Judith Weir’s chamber opera Blond Eckbert in Snape Maltings Concert Hall conducted by Gerry Cornelius. 

Based on a supernatural short story by the German-born writer, Ludwig Tieck, one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the opera was directed by Robin Norton-Hale and produced by English Touring Opera in association with Britten Pears Arts with the composer - now in her 70th year and one of this year’s artists-in-residence - responsible for the libretto.  

A haunting tale of isolation and enigma, the scenario surrounds Eckbert (sung by baritone Simon Wallfisch) and his wife Berthe (mezzo-soprano Flora McIntosh) living a life of quiet solitude in their cosy forest home in the Harz Mountains until Walther, an old friend of Eckbert, sung by tenor William Morgan, arrives at their doorstep on a rough and tough stormy night thereby setting in motion a series of revelations, mysteries and intrigue. 

Judith Weir: Blond Eckbert - English Touring Opera - Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh Festival (Photo copyright Richard Hubert Smith)