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)

Aldeburgh Festival at 75: Blond Eckbert and Curlew River, plus Unsuk Chin, Judith Weir, Alban Gerhardt and Daniel Pioro as featured artists

The 75th Aldeburgh Festival opens on 7 June and runs until 23 June 2024. The festival features stagings of Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert and Britten's Curlew River, and the festival's featured musicians are composers Judith Weir and Unsuk Chin, violinist Daniel Pioro and cellist Alban Gerhardt.

Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert is being staged as a co-production between Britten Pears Arts and English Touring Opera, and the work is directed by Robin Norton-Hale, conducted by Gerry Cornelius with a cast that includes Simon Wallfisch and Aoife Miskelly. Ryan Wigglesworth will conduct the Knussen Chamber Orchestra in the premiere of Weir's The Planet and Wigglesworth also conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Weir's Forest. Soprano Claire Booth performs Weir's solo opera, King Harald's Saga whilst the BBC Singers perform Blue Remembered Hill. The Leonkoro Quartet premiere Weir's second string quartet, The Spaniard, and there are performances of more of Weir's music from pianists Stephen Osborne and Rolf Hind, Trio Boheme, the Nash Ensemble, Aldeburgh Voices and Tenebrae.

Pianists Joseph Havlat and Rolf Hind will be sharing performance of Unsuk Chin's complete Preludes, whilst Tenebrae premiere Chin's new 40-part motet to go with Tallis' Spem in Alium for performance in Ely Cathedral. The Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, conductor Roderick Cox, premiere Chin's Alaraph. 

Cellist Alban Gerhardt will be performing Unsuk Chin's Cello Concerto, a work written for him, with Ryan Wigglesworth and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Gerhardt is also the soloist in Elgar's Cello Concerto with Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He joins forces with soprano Claire Booth and pianist Joseph Havlat for Thomas Larcher's My illness is the medicine I need, based on extracts from interviews with patients of mental-health facilities, and Splinters. Then Gerhardt and pianist Steven Osborne recreate the June 1961 recital by Britten and Rostropovich which saw the world premiere of Britten’s Cello Sonata, along with classic works by Schubert, Schumann and Debussy. Gerhardt will be pairing Bach and Britten with their solo cello suites.

Violinist Daniel Pioro joins pianist Simon Smith for Brahms' three Violin Sonatas, and he joins with the Marian Consort for a programme of music for dusk including Tom Coult, Arvo Pärt and John Tavener. Pioro will also bring a deep-listening element, inspired by Pauline Oliveros, to a festival walk, and the violinist is also inviting people to drop in to his practice session at the Red House. And Pioro is the soloist in Britten Violin Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ryan Wigglesworth.

There will be a new staging of Britten’s church parable Curlew River, 60 years after its first performance, directed by Claire van Kampen with music director Audrey Hyland and tenor Ian Bostridge, baritone Peter Braithwaite, bass-baritone Sir Willard White and singers and alumni from the Britten Pears Young Artists programme. Alongside this will be a rare chance to experience Sumidagawa (“Sumida River”), one of the most renowned Noh plays, which inspired Britten’s church parable Curlew River.  Other Britten at the festival includes suites from The Prince of the Pagodas and Death in Venice, St Nicholas (as part of a concert recreating the festival's opening concert from 1948).

The full festival brochure is available here [PDF]. Full details from the festival website.

Aldeburgh Festival at 75: festival regular, Tony Cooper reports

Britten: The Burning Fiery Furnace - Aldeburgh Festival, Orford Church, 1966 (Photo: John Richardson / Britten Pears Arts)

Flashing through life, this year’s Aldeburgh Festival notches up its 75th edition and features a stellar line-up of international performers offering a wealth of music across a wholesome 17 days. Festival regular, Tony Cooper, reports.

Founded by Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Eric Crozier in 1948, the Aldeburgh Festival, originally centred on the Borough’s cosy and intimate Jubilee Hall in Crabbe Street with a seating capacity of just 236. However, when Britten and Pears conceived the bright idea of turning the Victorian-built malt-house at Snape, situated about five miles inland from Aldeburgh, into an 832-seat venue, Snape Maltings Concert Hall was born. Officially opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1967, the Snape Maltings Concert Hall suffered serious fire damage two years later, re-opening in time for the Aldeburgh Festival the following year. 

The larger venue, of course, opened the festival to a much wider audience while it could also attract much larger ensembles and orchestras, too, as opposed to the intimate (but much-loved) Jubilee Hall. Ambitious as ever, though, Britten and Pears never stood still and within five years they reclaimed more buildings on the site and established a centre for talented young musicians.  

75th Aldeburgh Festival: Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert, Britten's Curlew River, Sumidagawa & more

The plans for next year's Aldeburgh Festival have been announced, and it turns out that 2024 is one of those years full of celebratory numbers. 2024 will be the 75th Aldeburgh Festival, composer Judith Weir's 70th year, 60 years since the premiere of Britten's Curlew River and Roger Wright's last festival after 10 years of being CEO. So, plenty to celebrate then.

The festival opens with a new production of Judith Weir's 1994 opera Blond Eckbert,  a co-production with English Touring Opera that will be directed by Robin Norton-Hale and conducted by Gerry Cornelius. Judith Weir is one of the festival's featured musicians and there will be performances of her music by BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ryan Wigglesworth, pianists Rolf Hind and Steven Osborne, the Nash Ensemble, Aldeburgh Voices, and Tenebrae, the BBC Singers perform her oratorio blue hills beyond blue hills, soprano Clare Booth performs the mini grand opera King Harald's Saga, the Leonkoro Quartet premieres of her second string quartet, The Spaniard, and Ryan Wigglesworth and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra premiere Planet, written specially for the orchestra.

Claire van Kampen directs a new production of Britten's Curlew River in Blythburgh Church, conducted by Audrey Hyland with tenor Ian Bostridge, baritone Peter Braithwaite, bass-baritone Sir Willard White and singers and alumni from the Britten Pears Young Artists programme. There will also be a chance to see the Japanese Noh play, Sumidagawa (Sumida River) that inspired Britten and the performance will be preceded by a new English re-telling of the story by Xanthe Gresham Knight.

The festival will feature a total of 23 world premieres (of which 10 are Britten Pears Arts commissions) from composers including Lara Agar, Tom Coult, Graham Fitkin, Robin Haigh, Joanna Ward, Judith Weir and Ryan Wigglesworth, plus three UK premieres of music by Unsuk Chin and Thomas Larcher.  Made in Snape is a strand of new music created on residencies at Snape Maltings by a wide range of contemporary musicians including Xhosa Cole, Mark Sanders and Jason Singh; Emily Levy and Mella Faye; Holy Other; Tom Rogerson, Liam Byrne and Clare O’Connell.

Soprano Gweneth Ann Rand will performing the three major Messiaen song cycles over three concerts with pianists Simon Lepper and Alison Devenis. The festival's other featured musicians are composer Unsuk Chin, violinist Daniel Pioro and cellist Alban Gerhardt. Alban Gerhardt recreates, with pianist Steven Osborne, the recital given by Rostropovich and Britten in 1961 which included the first performance of Britten’s Cello Sonata and Gerhardt also performs both Elgar and Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concertos, the latter written for him. 

The first ever Aldeburgh Festival concert from 5 June 1948 is also recreated in a performance by Britten Sinfonia with music by Purcell and Handel alongside Britten's St Nicholas and a new piece by Robin Haigh. Britten Sinfonia also bring their staging of Holst's Savitri first seen last year [see my review] alongside Imogen Holst's Suite and RVW's Oboe Concerto with Nicholas Daniels.

The 75th Aldeburgh Festival runs from 7 to 23 June 2024, full details from the festival website.

Summer at Snape

Britten Pears Arts' Summer at Snape returns this year with six weeks of events at venues across Snape Maltings and The Red House in Aldeburgh from 24 July to 2 September 2023, including music, dancing, walks & talks, art, food & drink, workshops, free outdoor music. Classical music visitors include Aurora Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, pianists Benjamin Grosvenor, Christian Blackshaw, Sir Andras Schiff, soprano Danielle de Niese, violinist Hyeyoon Park, guitarist Sean Shibe, flautist Adam Walker, violist Timothy Ridout, Ensemble 360, the Jess Gillam Ensemble, The King’s Singers, Fretwork, Sphinx Virtuosi, Slide Action, and Connaught Brass.

The Aurora Orchestra will be bringing their latest challenging project, performing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring from memory, whilst pianist Christian Blackshaw will be performing all of Mozart's piano sonatas and fantasias across four concerts. The Gavin Bryars Ensemble will be celebrating the composer's 80th birthday.

The BBC Concert Orchestra, conductor Barry Wordsworth, will give the world premiere of the orchestral version of Peter Dickinson’s Unicorns Suite alongside Lord Berners’ A Wedding Bouquet, Doreen Carwithen’s Men of Sherwood Forest and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Keri-Lynn Wilson conducts the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra in a programme that combines Beethoven's Eroica Symphony with music by two Ukrainian composers, Yevhen Stankovych and Myroslav Skoryk. The National Youth String Orchestra will be performing music by Britten, Beethoven, Shostakovich arranged Rudolph Barshai and Anna Clyne.

Full details from the Britten Pears Arts website.

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival, the 74th edition, features a stellar line-up of international performers offering a wealth of music across a wholesome 17 days. Tony Cooper reports

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at Snape Maltings

The Aldeburgh Festival (Friday 9 to Sunday 25 June) opens with a Britten Pears Arts commission and the world première of Sarah Angliss’ opera Giant based on the true and gruesome tale of surgeon John Hunter and his obsession with the 18th-century ‘Irish giant’, Charles Byrne, a man he truly betrayed in one of the most disturbing, chilling and horrifying acts during the era of the grave robbers.  

Written for five voices, Giant uses 18th-century instruments, live electronic chemistry and bespoke music machines as it vividly recalls the events surrounding Byrne’s death whose corpse was, in fact, stolen to order and put on public display. An extraordinary story which resonates through the ages. 

And in celebration of the centenary of Hungarian composer, György Sándor Ligeti, his music is at the forefront of this year’s festival. And adding their musical prowess to the festivities are The King’s Singers who’ll perform the composer’s Six Nonsense Madrigals at St Peter’s-by-the-Waterfront, Ipswich (Thursday, 15 June, 2pm) while Pierre-Laurent Aimard (a former artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival) returns to Snape Maltings (Monday, 19 June, 7.30pm) to perform Ligeti’s Etudes, one of the richest and most original collections of solo piano music of the late 20th century of which Aimard is one of the world’s leading interpreters.

35 world premieres and an Irish giant: Aldeburgh Festival 2023

Alison Wilding's Migrant (2003) at Snape 

The 2023 Aldeburgh Festival will run from 9 to 25 June 2023, and features 35 world premieres (of which 21 are Britten Pears Arts commissions) and 9 European, UK and English premieres. The festival opens with the premiere of Sarah Angliss' new opera Giant, which tells the story of the 18th-century “Irish giant” Charles Byrne, explores the true tale of surgeon John Hunter and his obsession with Charles Byrne – a man he betrayed in one of the most disturbing acts in the era of the grave robbers. Angliss' score uses just five voices, period instruments and live electronics, and the opera will be directed by Sarah Fahie.

There will be the UK premiere of a new dance piece, The Art of Being Human created by Laurence Dreyfus and his ensemble Phantasm, choreographer Sommer Ulrickson, and visual artist Alexander Polzin, and using music of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Beyond Aldeburgh, the Aldeburgh Festival Extra sees Bushra El-Turk's opera, Woman at Point Zero receiving its UK premiere at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio.  

2023 featured musicians include the pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, baritone and composer Roderick Williams, and composers Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Cassandra Miller. The festival will be celebrating Ligeti's 100th anniversary, with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, jazz pianist Michael Wollny and world premieres from the Ligeti Quartet. String quartets are a feature of the 2023 festival with eight leading quartets performing.

The Knussen Orchestra returns for two concerts conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth with music by Mozart, Elliott Carter, Ligeti, Haydn, Brahms and Wigglesworth. Visiting orchestras include John Wilson's Sinfonia of London, the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which will be performing with its new chief conductor Kazuki Yamada.

The Red House will be open daily during the festival and will feature an exhibition of paintings by Mary Potter (1900-1981), who lived in Aldeburgh for 30 years and used her immediate surroundings to inspire her work. In 1951 Potter moved, with her husband, to the Red House in Aldeburgh. After her divorce, she became a close friend of Britten's and would swap houses with him.

There will also be an exhibition in Snape Maltings of the work of John Piper drawn from Britten and Pears' personal collection.  Twenty years after Alison Wilding's sculpture Migrant was first installed at Snape Maltings, and to celebrate its proud new setting in the reedbeds, the artist returns to the Aldeburgh Festival with a show of both new and existing works.

Full details from the Britten Pears Arts website.

Aldeburgh Festival 2022

Britten & Women, Aldeburgh Festival 2022

East Anglian-based arts writer, Tony Cooper, writes about the Aldeburgh Festival which comes round in June.

Founded by Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Eric Crozier in 1948, the Aldeburgh Festival originally centred itself on the Borough’s cosy and intimate Jubilee Hall situated in Aldeburgh’s Crabbe Street and built at the expense of local industrialist Newson Garrett to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. Interestingly, Garrett also built the complex of maltings at the village of Snape situated about five miles inland from Aldeburgh where Britten and Pears harboured the idea for years of converting the old Victorian red-brick malt-house at into a concert hall.

Their dream came true when the Snape Maltings Concert Hall was graciously opened by Her Majesty the Queen, accompanied by Prince Philip, on 7th June 1969 marking the festival’s 21st edition. Originally, Britten wanted a hall seating 1000 costing no more than £50,000 but had to settle for one seating 830 costing £127,000. The opening gala programme - entitled ‘Music for a Royal Occasion’ - included an instrumental piece by Henry VIII, a Byrd prayer for Elizabeth Im Purcell's ode ‘Come Ye Sons of Art, two movements from Mendelssohn's ‘Scottish’ Symphony (dedicated to Queen Victoria) plus three pieces from Britten's opera, Gloriana, focusing on the life of Elizabeth I.

Tragedy, however, followed the grand and royal opening when the Maltings became gutted by fire. A new production of Mozart’s Idomeneo was all ready for the stage but immediately transferred to Blythburgh church. Impatiently, Britten wanted the hall rebuilt just as it was and quickly, too. Miraculously, this came about. The hall - completed by timber seating inspired by the auditorium of the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth - opened in time for the 1970 festival. Once again, the Queen ventured to Suffolk to open the rebuilt hall commenting that she hoped not to be asked back a third time.

However, the move to Snape paid off handsomely for the festival opening it up to a new and wider audience while the venue could also attract much larger ensembles and orchestras as opposed to Jubilee Hall.

Britten Pears Arts: Festival of New

Photograph used with kind permission of Thorne Old Photos

Britten Pears Arts' Festival of New went on-line earlier this year, but the festival returns to live events at Snape Maltings over two days in September, 10/9/2021 and 11/9/2021, with seven performances and two installations developed during residencies at Snape Maltings which are designed to give artists creative freedom.

• Singer/songwriter/producer THABO telling stories through song within an immersive environment which offers sights and scents as well as sounds
• KOGG - an experimental electronic collaboration between Selena Kay and Cerys Hogg, a fusion of their diverse musical backgrounds and collective interests
• Call Me Unique - singer/songwriter & guitarist who fuses the sounds of jazz, soul, futurebeats, and scat-singing with influences from Lauryn Hill, Ed Sheeran, Ella Fitzgerald & Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes
• Thea - an opera by composer Amanda Johnson and librettist Jo Clement about a single strong female character, inspired by one of the composer’s Bargee Traveller ancestors. The work aims to challenge the unfavourable portrayal of women in opera, particularly those from Traveller backgrounds
• PRANASA - Supriya Nagarajan (voice), Sarah Waycott (flute), and Yanna Zissiadou (piano) take their name from the Sanskrit word ‘Prana’, meaning ‘ultimate breath’, and ‘Anasa’, Greek for ‘Breath’
• Christo Squier: Subatomic - composer Christo Squier and experimental particle physicist Dr. Teppei Katori are joined by a host of instrumentalists to explore this fascinating subatomic world via composition, sonification, projection and performance
• Sound Voice Project - a visionary exploration of the human voice and possibilities of collaboration from Hannah Conway and Hazel Gould
• BPYAP Composers Film - specially-commissioned short film by Jessie Rodger, focusing on the creative processes of the six early-career composers currently supported by the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme

Full details from the Britten Pears website.

Aldeburgh Festival 2022

Aldeburgh Music and Snape Maltings Concert Hall from across the River Alde (Photo Philip Vile)

Britten Pears Arts is giving itself space to catch up and present some of the work which has gone unperformed over the last 18 months, and so it has just been announced that the 2022 Aldeburgh Festival will be extended by a week and will now take place from 3 to 26 June 2022. 

The festival will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme, founded by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears to provide high level performance training for the world’s best emerging professional musicians. The latest cohort joined the programme in July 2021 and their 12 months as  Britten Pears Young Artists will culminate in performances at the 2022 Aldeburgh Festival.

Tom Coult and Alice Birch's first opera Violet was due to be premiered at the 2020 Aldeburgh Festival, and the postponed premiere will now take place at the 2022 festival. Developed at Snape Maltings as part of its Jerwood Opera Writing Programme, Violet is set in an isolated community controlled by the regularity of the town clock. Suddenly the clock begins to skip time and an hour is lost – every day. As the hours disappear, long-held hierarchies evaporate and ordered society falls into disarray. Violet is co-commissioned and co-produced by Music Theatre Wales, Britten Pears Arts for the Aldeburgh Festival and Theater Magdeburg.

Summer at Snape

Snape Maltings

Britten Pears Arts is not presenting an Aldeburgh Festival this year, but they have announced an action-packed Summer at Snape season running until early September with the concerts in June having a strongly festival feel with an emphasis on new work and on the music of Britten. Things kick off on the weekend of 21 to 23 May, when performers include the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth in music by Mozart, Julian Anderson and Ryan Wigglesworth (and the performances are given in memory of pianist and conductor Steuart Bedford, who died in February this year and was an Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 1974 - 1998), and mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and pianist Joseph Middleton in music by Brahms, Mahler, Bridge and Tippett.

 

The centenary of horn player Dennis Brain will be marked by performances of two works written for Brain, Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings and Canticle III: Still falls the rain, along with Britten's In Memoriam Dennis Brain. Horn player Ben Goldscheider will be performing music by Tansy Davies and Peter Maxwell Davies. 

 

There will be premieres of a series of new versions of Britten's music, Colin Matthews' string orchestra versions of the Double Concerto (a student piece written when Britten was just 18) and Charm of Lullabies, Robin Holloway's orchestration of the song cycle Winter Words (with tenor Nick Spence, London Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Edward Gardner), Joseph Phibbs' new chamber version of Our Hunting Fathers (with soprano Elizabeth Watts and the Hebrides Ensemble).

 

There will be a chance to hear Britten's folk-song arrangements alongside the folk originals when folk-singer Maz O'Connor joins pianist Roger Vignoles and Britten Pears Young Artists soprano Milly Forrest and tenor Laurence Kilsby.

 

During June, there are several projects which should have premiered at last year's festival along with new works for 2021, including the first public performance of Colin Matthews' Seascapes (with soprano Clare Booth and the Nash Ensemble, who premiered the work at the Wigmore Hall earlier this month),  and music by Tansy Davies, John Tavener, John Woolrich and Stephen Hough. There are two new music-theatre pieces, soprano Juliet Fraser in Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman, and soprano Nadine Benjamin's new piece which follows one woman’s journey from fragmentation to wholeness. Tenor Allan Clayton (who was due to be artist in residence at the 2020 festival) joins pianist James Baillieu and the Aurora Orchestra for performances of music by Mark-Anthony Turnage, Priaulx Rainier and Britten, plus the complete Britten canticles.

 

Full details from the Snape Maltings website.