Page 127 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

numerous, enthusiastic and well-informed; and the level of
orchestral playing remains extraordinarily high.

I went to Sapporo on Hokkaido, the north island, to sing Britten’s
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with the Sapporo

Symphony. All bar one were Japanese players, and the orchestra
is little known outside its country (we played one gig in Tokyo’s

Suntory Hall), but it played the musical poles of Britten (spare,

transparent, economical) and Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony (grand,
vast, expansive). Its chief conductor, Matthias Bamert, displayed

total stylistic assurance. In the three recitals I gave in Osaka,
Yokohama and Tokyo it was noticeable, as ever, that many in the

audience knew the words of the songs (mouthing them as I sang)

and were quiet to a preternatural degree. Britten’s Canticle III for
voice, horn and piano, a setting of Edith Sitwell’s “Still Falls the

Rain”, was particularly telling in a city and a country that has
known the worst of aerial bombardment.

In June I’ll be returning, indirectly and metaphorically, to Japan,

playing Britten’s “parable for church performance”, Curlew River,
at the Aldeburgh Festival, a hybrid work based on a Japanese

Noh play, Sumidagawa, which also forms part of the festival
programme. It was William Plomer, great friend of Ian Fleming,

Japanophile, adviser on You Only Live Twice, who wrote the

libretto of Britten’s masterpiece. Only connect.