A swirl of black specks, identifiable as a flock of birds, is the striking design for this year’s Aldeburgh festival programme. For a land of open skies and Suffolk wildfowl, this image of murmuration would suit any year: the one and the many, the symphony and the thousands of notes. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), with the tenor Peter Pears, founded the festival in 1948. He still has a greater number of works performed than anyone else. No complaints. He wrote enough music to avoid unwanted repetition.
Aldeburgh has evolved since Britten’s death, but its essence remains. Dedication to new generations is fierce, as it always was, but the atmosphere is more open, less cliquey. Across a fortnight of concerts, 45 premieres will have been performed. (The BBC Proms 2023, over eight weeks and 71 concerts, is doing well with 23.) This year’s featured artists are two contrasting composers of the same generation, the Icelandic Anna Thorvaldsdóttir (b 1977) and the Canadian Cassandra Miller (b 1976); Siberian-born pianist Pavel Kolesnikov and British baritone and composer Roderick Williams.
After six concerts in two days last weekend, the many highlights jostle for attention. On Friday night, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hannu Lintu, paid tribute to the late Kaija Saariaho (Ciel d’hiver, 2013) and gave the UK premiere of Thorvaldsdóttir’s majestic AIŌN. Taking inspiration from the Hellenistic deity of cyclical time, this sonic adventure cartwheeled back and forth in its own temporal sphere, thunderous and mysterious. Drum rolls shattered our aural universe, instrumental textures glistening in contrast. A teeming, adroit account of Mahler’s Symphony No 1 completed the programme.
With Mahler still pounding in our ears, we hurried from the Maltings to the Britten Studio next door for late-night Bach: from maximal to minimal in scale though not artistry. Kolesnikov, in a pool of light, played the Goldberg Variations, visionary freedom cavorting with digital precision (he has played the Goldbergs often, including the previous week at London’s Jazz Cafe). Hours later, next morning, he was at Jubilee Hall for a two-piano concert with his duo partner, Samson Tsoy, an equal meeting of minds (and shirts).
Switching deftly between two upright pianos, they paid homage to György Kurtág (b 1926) and his pianist wife, the late Márta Kurtág, with a sequence of Kurtág and Bach. Hands and fingers crisscrossed as one, as if braiding and twisting lace. The initial impression that Tsoy gives structure, Kolesnikov poetry, is entirely dashed when they reverse parts and pianos: each provides both.
The pair were soloists in the second of two concerts conducted by John Wilson, with his Sinfonia of London. If you are obliged to hear Britten’s Scottish Ballad Op 26 (1941), a crazy concerto for two grand pianos and orchestra, this was as good as it gets, all the highland flinging and flamboyant reeling handled with skirling wit. In the other Sinfonia of London concert, Roderick Williams, in luxuriant voice, captured the languid richness of Sally Beamish’s new orchestral version of Four Songs from Hafez (2007).
Wilson’s concerts were structured around two orchestral monuments, Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances and Elgar’s Symphony No 2. Each showed the dazzling quality of this orchestra. The strings have a solid, powerful energy, each player bobbing up from their seat with exhilaration as they play, bows lifted high. At one point in the Rachmaninov, the violas roared with the force of an advancing cyclone. The lyricism and individuality of the woodwind, the potency of the brass, the commitment of every player, combine to make this orchestra one of the best ensembles anywhere, with Wilson the catalyst. The cheers in the Maltings were noisy.
In between all this, on Saturday afternoon at Orford Church, the Bozzini Quartet gave a meditative programme, Influences, with the music of Cassandra Miller as the focus. At this point my listening brain had reached momentary capacity: Miller’s delicate repetitions in About Bach (2015), two violins rising in scale figurations and exploring slow harmonics, cello and viola holding a changing pattern of four notes, came as balm. A more incisive response must wait for another encounter.
One last event was The Art of Being Human, with musical direction by Laurence Dreyfus, leading his viol group Phantasm, and choreography by Sommer Ulrickson (premiered in Berlin in March 2023). This mesmeric show was physically daring, liberating all ideas of gender and inviting acceptance of difference. Figures emerged, like a living version of Rodin’s Metamorphosis, as if from rock. The musicians, interacting with five dancers, at times played their instruments while lying on the floor (an insurer’s nightmare). The music was by John Dowland, William Byrd, William Lawes, Orlando Gibbons and more, often played from memory. The impact was provocative and ethereal.
To hear so much, of such high quality and variety, marked this as a standout year for Aldeburgh. To those who complain of audiences there being old, I’d give a dusty answer. People relinquish this festival no more readily than life itself. A diminishing few came in the early days, and knew Britten and Pears. I watched one for whom this is true escorted by helpers on both arms. He won’t give up. The music acts as an elixir. The addiction starts young (now fed by many training programmes). We forget that.
At the Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano has shown formidable athleticism as he nears his home straight as music director. Trapezing nimbly from German Wozzeck, to Italian Il Trovatore, he has now landed on French opera with Massenet’s Werther, in a revival of Benoît Jacquot’s production. The draw was international star tenor Jonas Kaufmann in the title role. He was in subdued voice, alas, the musicality still there, heft and ardour absent. Applause was warm out of respect for this once great singer. Aigul Akhmetshina, superb as Charlotte, stole attention vocally. Massenet’s melodrama has many urgent, over the top moments. Nothing quite beats the Christmas Eve interlude before the final crisis. The ROH orchestra, with eloquent string solos, rose collectively to join their beloved Pappano on the high wire to give an intrepid performance.
Star ratings (out of five)
Aldeburgh festival ★★★★★
Werther ★★★
The 74th Aldeburgh festival in Suffolk finishes on 25 June
Werther is at the Royal Opera House until 4 July
