Page 206 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

18 May 2024

C O M M E N T
As the BBC continues to butcher classical music,

one man shows how to save it

Both Aldeburgh Festival and its outgoing chief executive, Roger Wright, embody the best of the
British tradition

SIMON HEFFER18 May 2024 • 7:00pm

Kathryn Rudge will sing the title role in Gustav Holst's Sāvitri, performed at this year's Aldeburgh
Festival CREDIT: Antonio Olmos

Next month’s Aldeburgh Festival, which starts on the Suffolk coast on June 7 and runs for more
than a fortnight, will be the last edition presided over by Roger Wright, who is retiring after 10
years. Wright, 67, is surely the most accomplished music administrator in Britain. He remains the
longest-serving controller in Radio 3’s history. From there, he went to Aldeburgh, leaving his old
network at the peak of excellence, before BBC executives with little interest in classical music and
even less knowledge of it began butchering it, despite fierce resistance from Wright’s successors.

While running the Proms, Wright considerably broadened the scope of the programme, and not by
holding “concerts” in car parks or showcasing the music of various meretricious pop groups, as his
successor – the excellent David Pickard, now also departing his post – has been pressurised to do
by the boneheads upstairs. Instead, Wright served what one might think was one of the purposes
of a national music festival sponsored by the nation’s state broadcaster: programming more superb